fornia 
lal 

V 


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JEW  AND 
GENTILE 


(Assays  on  Jewish 

Jtpologetics  and 

Kindred  Historical 

Subjects 


GOTTHARD 
DEUTSCH 


JEW  and  GENTILE 

Essays  on  Jewish  Apologetics  and 
Kindred*  Historical  Subjects 

BY 

GOTTHARD  DEUTSCH 

Professor  of  Jewish  History  and  Literature,  Hebrew  Union  College 

SCROLLS,  VOL.  Ill 


I  920 

THE  STRATFORD  COMPANY,  Publishers 

BOSTON 


Copyright    1920 

The   STRATFORD   CO.,   Publishers 
Boston,   Mass. 


The  Alpine  Press,  Boston,  Mass.,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  Deficiency  of  the  Sources  of  Jewish 

History         .....       1 

II.     Origin  of  Christianity         .          .          .10 

III.  The  Protestant  Reformation  and  Juda- 

ism      .          .          .          .          .          .38 

IV.  Why,  When  and  How  Shall  We  Write 

Memoirs? 67 

V.     The    Humor    and    Tragedy    of    "Jew- 
Taxes" 82 

VI.  The  Maimonides  Prayer  Myth     .          .     93 

VII.  Journalese  .          .          .          .          .96 

VIII.  Library  Chat 103 

IX.  Plowden  in  Theology  .         .          .          .109 

X.  Higher  and  Lower  Anti-Semitism        .   119 

XI.  It  Takes  Two  to  Make  a  "Shidduk"     .  127 

XII.     The  Real  Cause  of  Anti-Semitic  Perse- 
cution ......   140 

XIII.     The  Curse  of  the  Crucifixion  .   164 


PREFACE 

AN  author  needs  no  apology  for  his  desire  to  see 
essays,  scattered  in  periodicals,  published  in  a 
more  accessible  and  permanent  form.  He  does  not 
wish  to  "sow  among  the  thorns."  The  public,  how- 
ever, requires  an  explanation,  why  the  author  should 
presuppose  on  their  part  a  similar  interest.  The 
reason  for  this  expectation  shall  be  briefly  given. 

The  position  of  the  Jewish  people  is  absolutely 
unique.  The  Jews  are  not  only  found  in  all  lands  of 
civilization  and  semi-civilization  but  their  position 
enters  conspicuously  into  all  prominent  questions  of 
public  life. 

The  relation  between  Church  and  State,  one  of  the 
most  vital  problems  of  humanity,  which  dominated 
the  politics  of  caliphs  and  czars,  which  impeded  the 
unification  of  Italy  and  cemented  the  North  American 
colonies  into  a  nation  of  unparalleled  strength,  has 
to  a  greater  or  lesser  extent  always  been  linked  with 
the  Jewish  question. 

The  regeneration  of  Russia  was  preceded  by  an  era 
of  pogroms.  The  French  republic  achieved  the  separa- 
tion of  State  and  Church  through  the  Dreyfus  affair. 
The  seething  caldrons  of  eastern  Europe,  and  espe- 
cially the  Balkans,  furnish  another  impressive  il- 
lustration of  the  same  law  of  history.  Poland  and 
Rumania  particularly  bring  it  home  to  us.  They  have 


PREFACE 

to  provide  a  resting  place  for  Ahasuerus  before  they 
can  expect  to  bring  order  into  their  chaotic  household. 

Above  all,  the  Balfour  Declaration  of  Nov.  2,  1917, 
and  its  indorsement  by  the  Supreme  Council  of  the 
Allied  Nations  at  San  Remo,  April  24,  1920,  are  an 
epoch-making  event  in  the  history  of  the  question 
whether  the  Orient  shall  conquer  the  Occident,  or 
whether  the  latter  shall  in  a  peaceful  way  return  to 
the  former  the  interest  on  the  capital  of  civiliatzion 
which  in  the  infancy  of  mankind,  Cadmus,  the  king 
of  the  East,  invested  in  Europe,  the  land  of  the  west. 

It  may  be  that  the  mandates  over  the  lands  of  Abra- 
ham and  Nimrod  will  be  the  closing  chapter  in  the 
struggle  for  western  dominion  of  which  the  victory 
of  Charles  Martel  over  the  Arabs  at  Tours  (732)  and 
the  defeat  of  the  Turks  by  John  Sobieski  at  the  gates 
of  Vienna  (1683)  are  the  most  important  epochs. 

But  even  if  these  mandates  should  prove  another 
crusaders'  romance,  their  connection  with  the  Jewish 
question  will  remain  a  fact,  and  the  Jews  will  con- 
tinue to  stand  forth  as  a  people  who  in  the  words  of 
their  prophet  are  either  a  "burdensome  stone  for  all 
the  peoples"  or  a  "blessing  among  the  nations." 

It  therefore  does  not  seem  altogether  an  author's 
vanity  when  he  expects  that  the  Jewish  side  of  the 
many  questions  connected  with  the  relation  between 
"Jew  and  Gentile"  will  meet  with  interest  on  the 
part  of  the  large  public,  an  interest  which,  he  hopes, 
may  prove  sympathetic.  Leopold  Zunz  (1794-1886), 
the  pioneer  of  systematic  and  critical  study  of  Jewish 


PREFACE 

History  and  Literature,  misnamed  "Science  of  Juda- 
ism," called  a  collection  of  essays,  bearing  011  this 
topic,  "Zur  Geschichte  und  Literatur. "  It  was  his 
desire  to  emphasize  the  principle  that  the  history  and 
literature  of  the  Jews  are  part  of  the  cultural  activi- 
ties of  universal  mankind.  I  believe,  as  he  did,  al- 
though I  selected  a  title  which  cannot  be  suspected  as 
camouflage  or  as  over-estimation  of  my  work. 

The  first  two  volumes  have  appeared  under  the  title 
"Scrolls"  (New  York  and  Cincinnati,  1917),  ex- 
plained from  a  Talmudic  motto  which  implies  the 
idea  that  the  interest  of  the  large  public  is  more 
easily  enlisted  by  essays  on  individual  topics,  loosely 
connected,  than  by  ponderous  coherent  works,  in- 
tended for  the  information  of  specialists.  Upon  the 
advice  of  friends  who  claim  that  the  original  title 
was  not  easily  understood,  I  relegated  it  in  this  third 
volume  to  the  position  of  sub-title.  I  hope  that  their 
advice  will  gain  for  the  book  greater  popularity,  and 
that  I  shall  have  contributed  a  modest  share  to  the 
noblest  ideal  of  mankind,  preached  by  Isaiah  and 
Micah,  by  Rousseau  and  Lessing,  and  not  less  impress- 
ively by  the  Jewish  apostle  to  the  heathen  world,  when 
he  said :  "let  each  man,  wherein  he  was  called,  therein 
abide  with  God." 


THE    DEFICIENCY    OF    THE    SOURCES    OF 
JEWISH     HISTORY* 

The  difficulties  in  writing  Jewish  history  are  mani- 
fold. The  severest  one  is  that  our  history  extends 
over  so  many  countries,  and  lacks,  at  least  up  to  the 
eighteenth  century,  all  chronological  continuity. 
Even  today,  this  most  important  basis  of  history  is 
missing  in  such  countries  as  Persia,  Morocco,  and 
Turkey,  where  the  annals  are  filled  with  an  occasional 
massacre,  the  sacking  of  a  Jewish  quarter,  a  blood 
accusation,  and  the  like. 

Another  very  important  defect  is  the  lack  of  the 
personal  element.  The  Jews  were  evidently  no  hero- 
worshippers.  Still,  this  does  not  suffice  to  explain 
the  entire  absence  of  biographies  and  autobiographies, 
down  to  the  seventeenth  century,  and  their  dearth, 
even  now.  This  defect  is  not  accidental.  When  we 
see  how  medieval  rabbis,  such  as  Mordecai  ben 
Hillel,  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and  Solomon  St. 
Goar,  of  the  fifteenth,  minutely  noted  down  all  that 
they  had  seen  from  their  teachers,  or  heard  from 
them,  about  the  religious  practices  of  former  rabbis, 
we  must  admit  that  there  is  bound  to  be  a  strong 


'The  American  Hebrew,  Nov.  9,  1906. 

[1] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

reason,  other  than  a  lack  of  hero-worship,  for  the 
absence  of  biographical  literature.  This  is  the  gen- 
eral tendency  of  rabbinic  thought,  which  has  created 
dialecticism. 

Dialecticism,  or  Pilpul,  as  it  is  called  in  rabbinic 
terminology,  is  the  method  of  harmonizing  two  ad- 
mittedly contradictory  statements.  The  same  method 
prevails  in  the  theology  of  all  denominations.  It  is 
the  method  of  the  opponents  of  biblical  criticism, 
of  the  Catholic  apologists  in  their  defense  of  Catholi- 
cism, and  of  Protestant  apologists  in  their  arguments 
against  the  liberal  school.  Rabbinic  theology,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  developed  this  art  to  such  an 
extent,  that  it  has  become  a  habit,  and  has  been 
applied  even  in  cases  where,  from  a  religious  point  of 
view,  it  was  not  necessary  at  all.  It  is  easily  under- 
stood that  a  believer  in  the  Mosaic  origin  of  the  whole 
Pentateuch,  would  not  find  a  contradiction  between 
the  Pentateuchal  law,  which  allows  the  election  of  a 
King,  and  the  book  of  Samuel,  supposed  to  have  been 
written  about  400  years  after  Moses,  which  treats  the 
desire  to  elect  a  King  as  a  rebellion  against  the  will  of 
God.  Rabbi  Abraham  Biberfeld  tried  his  hand  on 
this  difficulty,  and  solved  it  by  saying  that  Moses 
intended  to  defer  the  election  of  a  King,  after  the 
completed  conquest  of  Palestine,  because  he  was 
afraid,  that  in  a  country  not  divided  up  into  farms 
of  modest  size,  the  election  of  a  King  would  lead  to 
the  formation  of  large  landed  estates.  The  orthodox 

[2] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Society  for  the  Promotion  of  the  Science  of  Judaism, 
in  Frankfort,  o.  M.,  judged  this  essay  worthy  of  the 
honor  of  publication  in  its  yearbook.  To  one  who  is 
not  compelled  by  dogmatic  views  to  harmonize  these 
two  contradictory  statements,  this  attempt  at  a  solu- 
tion must  appear  exceedingly  weak,  nevertheless  as 
some  kind  of  a  harmonization  was  necessary  from  the 
orthodox  point  of  view,  this  might  do,  for  lack  of  a 
better  one. 

Less  cogent,  according  to  our  opinion,  is  the  har- 
monization of  two  different  views  of  the  rabbinical 
law.  If,  for  instance,  one  rabbi  limits  the  time  for 
the  recital  of  the  Shema  to  midnight,  and  the  other 
extends  it  to  daybreak,  there  would  seem  to  be  no 
apparent  reason  for  harmonization.  We  might  very 
well  say,  that  the  two  men  had  different  opinions  on  a 
law.  The  important  factor  for  the  understanding 
of  this  anxiety  for  harmonization  is  the  belief  that  the 
whole  rabbinical  law  dates  back  to  the  time  of  Moses, 
and  consequently,  must  not  be  contradictory  in  any 
detail.  Therefore,  two  different  authorities,  unless 
one  is  absolutely  wrong,  which  can  not  be  admitted, 
must  have  expressed  the  same  views  in  words  which 
are  only  apparently  contradictory.  This  theory  of 
the  Mosaic  origin  of  the  rabbinical  law  also  pushes  the 
personality  of  its  interpreter  into  the  background. 
He  became  a  mere  messenger.  Samson  R.  Hirsch  has 
most  emphatically  expressed  this  theory  in  his  criti- 
cism of  Graetz's  work.  When  Rabbi  Johanan  thinks 

[3] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

that  it  was  not  necessary  to  sacrifice  one's  life,  in 
order  to  escape  violation  of  the  law  ordered  by  a 
tyrant,  he  was  not,  as  Graetz  thinks,  influenced  by 
existing  conditions.  Hirsch  insists  that  Johanan 
merely  gave  information  on  a  law,  which  had  been 
so  interpreted  from  the  time  of  Moses. 

It  is  manifest  that  such  a  view  tends  to  make  the 
personal  element  disappear  from  history,  and, 
therefore,  as  this  unrestricted  belief  in  authority 
grew,  scholars  would  perhaps  note  carefully  how 
Rabbi  So-and-So  acted  in  religious  practice,  but  would 
pay,  otherwise,  no  attention  to  his  private  life.  Only 
in  this  way  can  we  understand  how  such  a  powerful 
personality  as  Rashi,  worshipped  by  his  contempo- 
raries and  idolized  by  posterity,  was  not  made  the  sub- 
ject of  a  biography,  although,  at  the  time  of  his  death, 
one  of  his  grandsons  was  quite  old  enough  to  appreci- 
ate his  grandfather's  importance.  The  same  reason 
explains  to  us  the  indifference  to  strictly  personal 
material  in  historic  records.  We  have  very  few 
private  letters,  diaries,  household  ledgers  and  other 
documents,  which  might  tend  to  cast  a  light  on  a 
man's  individuality.  Only  occasionally,  in  the  pref- 
aces of  their  works,  the  authors  make  a  few  personal 
remarks  touching  their  life,  mostly  in  the  sense  of 
presenting  an  excuse  for  their  boldness  in  publishing 
their  works.  Jair  Hayim  Bacharach  (1634-1762), 
points,  with  pardonable  pride,  to  his  father  and 
grandfather,  his  predecessors  in  the  rabbinate  of 

[4] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Worms,  and  to  his  grandmother's  grandfather,  the 
famous  "High  Rabbi  Loew,"  of  Prague  (1530-1609). 
He  does  it  in  order  to  prepare  the  readers  for  the 
publication  of  his  own  works,  in  which  he  wishes  to 
show  himself  not  unworthy  of  his  great  ancestors. 
Zebi  Ashkenazi  (1658-1718)  tells  of  his  terrible  ex- 
periences when  the  city  of  Ofen  was  besieged  in  1686, 
and  his  wife  and  child  were  killed  by  a  bombshell. 
It  is  a  public  expression  of  gratitude  to  Providence, 
which  saved  his  life,  and  which  he  thus  acknowledges. 
Jacob  Joshua,  of  Frankfort,  o.  M.,  (1680-1756) 
speaks,  in  the  preface  of  his  work,  ' '  Pene  Jehoshua, ' ' 
of  the  miracle  which  saved  his  life,  when,  in  the  explo- 
sion of  a  powder  magazine  at  Lemberg,  in  1703,  he  was 
buried  under  the  debris  of  his  house.  In  order  to 
express  his  thanks  to  Providence,  he  resolved  to 
defend  the  honor  of  Rashi  against  the  criticism  by  the 
Tosafists.  The  first  real  memoirs  that  I  know  of,  if 
we  do  not  include  the  autobiography  of  Josephus,  who 
lived  in  the  pre-Talmudic  age,  is  the  short  history  of 
his  troubles  written  by  Lipman  Heller  (1578-1654), 
when  some  of  his  enemies  informed  against  him  to 
the  effect  that  he  had  blasphemed  Jesus  and  Mary. 
This  was  a  very  dangerous  charge  at  a  time  when 
religious  fanaticism  reigned  supreme  in  Bohemia,  and 
the  Jesuits  strained  every  effort  to  show  the  necessity 
of  protecting  the  holy  Catholic  religion  from  all 
attacks.  He  was  brought  in  chains  to  Vienna,  and 
saved  from  prison  only  with  great  difficulty.  Even 

[5] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

then  he  felt  insecure  in  the  lands  of  the  Emperor,  and 
therefore  emigrated  to  Poland.  In  writing  down  his 
story,  he  wishes  to  preserve  the  memory  of  his  salva- 
tion for  his  posterity,  who  should  forever  celebrate  the 
day  of  his  liberation  from  prison.  The  details  were 
of  little  consequence  to  him,  and,  in  his  great  kind- 
ness he  even  suppressed  the  names  of  his  enemies. 
This  delicacy,  however,  greatly  reduced  the  historical 
value  of  his  memoir. 

A  very  valuable  specimen  of  a  real  autobiography 
is  preserved  to  us  in  the  memoirs  of  Glueckel,  of 
Hameln  (1646-1724).  She  was  a  woman  of  uncom- 
mon intellect,  and  of  more  than  ordinary  education, 
but  her  life  presented  nothing  extraordinary.  She 
was  born  in  Hamburg,  married  at  the  age  of  14, 
Hayim  of  Hameln,  and,  after  a  short  stay  in  the 
latter  city,  went  back  to  her  native  place,  where  she 
remained  until  she  went  to  Metz,  where  she  married 
again  after  a  long  widowhood,  and  where  she  spent 
the  years  of  her  old  age.  Her  interests  are,  naturally, 
centered  on  her  petty  business  affairs,  and  on  the 
events  in  her  large  family.  Of  the  non-Jewish  world, 
she  knows  nothing  worth  telling.  Even  great  events 
in  Jewish  life,  such  as  the  excitement  created  by  the 
Messianic  pretender,  Sabbathai  Zebi,  she  touches  but 
slightly.  Still,  her  naive  way  of  describing  match- 
making, and  journeys  to  the  fairs  of  Leipsic,  instruc- 
tion of  children,  and  the  like,  possess  a  great  value  to 
us,  because  we  learn  something  of  the  daily  life  of  the 

[6] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

great  masses,  which  is  entirely  neglected  in  literature. 
A  great  master  of  history,  considering  his  age  and 
education,  was  Jacob  Emden  (1696-1776),  born  at 
Altona,  as  the  son  of  a  prominent  rabbinical  family, 
following,  later  on,  his  father,  to  Amsterdam.  He 
married  at  the  age  of  18,  and  lived  for  a  time  in  the 
house  of  his  father-in-law,  Mordecai  Kohen,  of 
Ungarisch-Brod,  in  Moravia,  and  afterwards  returned 
to  Germany,  when  he  became  rabbi  of  Emden,  and, 
finally  settled  down  again  in  his  birthplace.  He  saw 
a  great  deal  of  the  world,  aside  from  his  occasional 
journeys  to  such  distant  places  as  Lemberg  and 
London.  Besides,  he  was  a  great  Talmudic  scholar; 
in  my  estimation,  the  greatest  scholar  of  his  age. 
His  horizon  was  wide,  and  owing  to  the  prominent 
part  which  he  took  in  the  religious  controversies  of  his 
days,  his  experiences  are  a  valuable  source  of  informa- 
tion as  to  the  moving  forces  of  the  Judaism  of  his  day. 
Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  he  wrote  his  memoirs, 
which  present  a  wealth  of  information  about  com- 
munal and  private  life.  He  tells  us  how  his  father 
failed  to  be  elected  Rabbi  of  Altona,  because  he  was 
too  independent  for  the  congregational  boss,  whom  he 
had  once  rebuked  because  of  the  high-handed  manner 
in  which  he  conducted  congregational  affairs.  He 
tells  us  how  matrimonial  schemes  occasionally  de- 
cided, in  his  days,  rabbinical  elections.  Issachar 
Kohen,  of  Altona,  had  a  very  homely  daughter, 
whom  he  wanted  to  marry  off,  and  for  whom  he  found 

[7] 


some  Schlemihl  of  a  Bachur.  In  order  to  obtain  for 
his  son-in-law  the  rabbinical  position  of  Keidani,  in 
Lithuania,  he  promised  to  the  rabbi  of  that  place, 
Ezekiel  Katzenelbogen,  the  rabbinate  of  Altona, 
and,  in  order  to  create  a  sentiment  favorable  to  this 
election,  Schnorrers  and  Melamedim  were  instructed 
to  tell  wonderful  tales  of  Rabbi  Ezekiel 's  learning  and 
piety.  With  the  same  naive  frankness,  he  tells  the 
story  how  he  sold  his  vote,  at  the  election  of  the  suc- 
cessor to  his  enemy,  Jonathan  Eybeschuetz,  and  how 
he  was  cheated,  afterwards,  of  the  bribe  promised  to 
him.  He  tells  us  further  that  he  had  trouble  in 
Emden,  because  he  would  not  allow  the  son  of  a  con- 
gregational boss  to  blow  the  Shofar  on  Eosh  Hoshana, 
and  because  he  exposed  some  frauds,  for  which  a 
prominent  member  of  the  congregation  had  engaged 
himself,  and  who  now  was  ashamed  of  his  credulity, 
and,  therefore,  accused  the  rabbi  of  intriguing  against 
him.  He  tells  us  of  the  Palestinian  Haham,  Moses 
Hagis,  who  was  liberally  supported  by  the  German 
congregation  of  Altona,  but  reciprocated  merely  by 
expressions  of  contempt  for  the  ' '  Tudescos. ' '  He  tells 
us  of  his  travels  in  Austria,  and  how  a  Catholic  priest 
who  was  in  the  same  stage-coach,  forced  him  to  give 
up  his  better  seat  for  another  one,  which  was  less  con- 
venient. Such  incidents  make  his  book  full  of  highly 
interesting  information. 

In  modern  times  this  literature  has  become  more 
numerous,  and,  strange  to  say,  a  great  deal  is  due  to 

[8] 


the  Hasidim.  While  these  people  in  their  fanatical 
mysticism,  might  be  expected  to  be  hostile  to  all 
civilizing  influences,  they  have  developed  a  biograph- 
ical literature,  because  the  important  point  in  their 
doctrine  is  that  certain  chosen  individuals  are  medi- 
ators between  God  and  man.  Their  "Zaddik,"  or 
"Rebbe,"  occupies  the  central  position  in  their 
religious  life,  and,  therefore,  they  have  preserved  all 
recollections  concerning  him,  even  the  most  insig- 
nificant private  letters.  There  is  a  great  deal  of 
legend,  very  often  of  the  silliest  kind,  in  their  works, 
but  these  are,  nevertheless,  a  laudable  presentation 
of  the  value  of  the  personal  in  history.  With  the 
entrance  of  the  Jews  into  modern  civilization,  bio- 
graphical literature,  naturally,  increased.  Moses 
Mendelssohn  was  already,  shortly  after  his  death,  the 
subject  of  a  careful  biographical  research.  Isaac  M. 
Jost,  with  his  fine  historical  tact,  unfortunately 
marred  by  his  dry,  schoolmasterly  tone,  showed  his 
historic  insight  by  writing  his  autobiography,  which 
is  very  important  because  it  presents  the  history  of 
the  transition  from  the  uncouth  methods  of  the  Heder 
to  modern  education.  Still  the  material  is,  even  now, 
not  as  large  as  it  might  have  been  for  a  clear  presenta- 
tion in  all  its  details  of  the  marvellous  transition  from 
Ghetto  life  into  modern  civilization. 


II 

THE    ORIGIN    OF    CHRISTIANITY* 

This  essay  originally  was  a  lecture  delivered  in 
1895,  eleven  years  before  William  Benjamin  Smith 
published  his  "Der  Vorchristliche  Jesus"  and  fifteen 
years  before  Arthur  Drews  startled  the  public,  accus- 
tomed to  take  Harnack's  idealized  Jesus  as  the  final 
verdict  of  historic  science  by  his  ''Die  Christus- 
mythe." 

The  author  states  this  fact  not  with  a  desire  of 
boasting  of  originality.  Alfred  Loisy  has  proven 
that  Harnack's  views  are  an  arbitrary  compromise 
between  historic  criticism  and  the  longing  of  a  church- 
man for  some  definite  expression  of  Christian  belief. 
The  fundamental  work  of  David  Friedrich  Strauss 
had  to  be  continued.  Strauss  was  largely  negative. 
He  showed  that  the  mythological  method,  applied  to 
the  gospel  story,  led  to  the  conclusion  that  what  we 
possess  of  early  Christian  history  is  a  crystallization 
of  ideals,  not  an  exaggerated  account  of  actual  facts, 
as  the  rationalistic  school  had  taught.  The  only 
point  which  is  entirely  new  in  my  presentation  of  the 
subject  is  the  explanation  of  Judas  Iscariot  as  "the 


*A    lecture    delivered    in    the    B.    Y.    Temple    of    Cincinnati,    Friday 
evening,    Jan.   5,    1896.      American   Israelite,   Jan.   30,   Feb.   6,    1896. 

[10] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

man  of  falsehood, ' '  an  emblem  of  Israel,  pertinaciously 
clinging  to  an  error. 

An  apology  is  due  to  Christian  readers  who — and  I 
can  not  blame  them  for  this — will  believe  that  "my 
eyes  are  blinded  and  my  heart  is  hardened"  by  Jewish 
prejudice.  To  them  I  owe  the  following  explanation. 
As  a  Jew  I  did  approach  the  question  of  the  historic 
origin  of  Christianity  without  dogmatic  prejudice. 
I  started  from  the  conviction  that  the  Christ  of  the 
dogma,  the  son  of  God,  ' '  the  lamb  of  God  which  taketh 
away  the  sins  of  the  world"  by  vicarious  atonement 
through  his  death,  who  rose  from  the  tomb  on  the 
third  day  after  his  death  to  give  evidence  of  the  truth 
of  bodily  resurrection  and  to  fulfill  what,  by  the  way, 
is  a  misrepresentation  of  Psalm  110,  a  prophecy  that 
he  would  sit  on  the  right  hand  of  the  father  in  heaven, 
is  an  impossibility. 

Yet  he  might  have  been  a  Jerome  Savonarola,  a 
John  Huss,  a  Michael  Servet,  one  of  the  many  victims 
of  ecclesiastical  tyranny  and  religious  fanaticism,  of 
whom  there  were  undoubtedly  some  in  ancient  Israel 
also.  My  study  of  the  problem,  however,  led  me  to 
the  belief,  that  he  is  a  creation  of  mythical  idealiza- 
tion, symbolizing  the  ideal  Judaism  of  the  second 
century  in  the  same  way  in  which  Ahasuerus  is  the 
symbol  of  Judaism,  condemned  to  live,  or  "William 
Tell  the  symbol  of  the  Swiss  struggle  for  freedom. 
Twenty-three  years  of  study  have  only  confirmed 
this  conviction,  and  I  therefore  give  this  essay  to  the 

[11] 


public  in  the  form  in  which  it  originally  was  delivered 
without  any  except  slight,  verbal  changes.  ''And 
be  indeed  that  I  have  erred,  mine  error  remaineth 
with  myself." 

The  Talmud,  (Abodah  zarah,  55,  a)  gives  a  dialogue 
between  Zeno  the  founder  of  the  Stoic  school  and  R. 
Akiba,  in  which  the  philosopher  is  reported  to  say: 
Although  both  of  us  know  that  there  is  nothing 
essential  in  Christianity,  how  is  it  that  so  many  sick 
are  healed  in  the  Christian  churches?  Between 
Zeno  and  B.  Akiba  there  is  an  interval  of  four  cen- 
turies and  although  for  this  reason  the  dialogue 
can  never  have  taken  place,  nevertheless  there  may 
be  some  truth  underlying  this  statement,  viz,  that  the 
leaders  of  the  two  spiritual  movements  of  whose  flesh 
and  bone  Christianity's  flesh  and  bone  were  formed, 
were  astonished  at  the  marvellous  rapid  growth 
of  Christianity.  The  stoic  philosophy  on  one  hand 
taught  not  to  resist  evil,  and  Judaism  taught  an  ideal 
state  of  the  future.  So  the  puzzle  over  the  remarkable 
progress  of  Christianity  may  well  have  been  the  topic 
of  the  conversation  between  some  rabbi  and  some 
representative  of  the  Stoic  philosophy.  The  reason 
for  the  remarkable  progress  of  Christianity  is  still 
a  problem  to  this  day.  In  order  to  understand  it,  it 
will  be  necessary  for  us  to  go  back  to  its  beginnings, 
and  to  study  the  religion  of  its  founder.  But  here 
we  meet  an  insuperable  obstacle.  The  German 
emperor  recently  addressing  the  recruits  of  his  navy 

[12] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

said:  A  soldier  must  be  a  good  Christian.  If  we 
revert  the  statement,  he  is  not  wrong,  for  Jesus  said : 
Give  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  and 
therefore  a  good  Christian  ought  to  be  a  soldier.  But 
His  Majesty  on  another  occasion  shortly  before  that 
time,  was  present  when  a  recruit  refused  to  take  the 
oath,  for  he  was  a  Christian  and  Jesus  had  taught: 
Swear  not  at  all  and  resist  not  evil.  Which  Christian- 
ity is  the  real  religion  of  Jesus  ? 

We  therefore  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that  Chris- 
tianity is  not  a  unit,  but  rather  a  complex  of  forces 
and  ideas.  When  I  speak  of  Christianity  in  this  con- 
nection, I  do  not  speak  of  the  Christianity  of  Pope 
Pius  the  Ninth,  or  of  Mr.  Pobedonoszew  compared 
with  that  of  Roger  Williams  and  General  Booth,  the 
diversity  of  which  no  one  of  the  parties  concerned 
would  deny.  I  speak  of  Christianity  as  it  appears  in 
the  oldest  documents;  even  then  it  comprised  views 
of  a  diametrically  opposed  character. 

Christianity  was  as  little  the  work  of  one  man  as 
was  any  movement  in  history.  No  matter  how  large 
a  portion  you  assign  to  George  Washington  in  the 
foundation  of  this  republic,  there  were  many  promi- 
nent men  who  aided  him,  and  whatever  they  have  ac- 
complished, it  would  not  have  been  possible  without 
the  Puritan  spirit  that  induced  men  to  leave  their 
homes  in  order  to  establish  the  kingdom  of  righteous- 
ness, that  taught  Barrow  and  Greenwood  to  die  on 

[13] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

the  scaffold  praying  for  the  Queen  who  had  con- 
demned them  to  the  gallows. 

Nor  was  the  reformed  church  for  which  the  Puri- 
tans suffered  the  work  of  one  man,  not  the  work  of 
Knox,  nor  the  work  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  however 
great  their  merits  are.  John  Huss  had  with  a  smile 
on  his  lips  testified  to  it  on  the  pyre  of  Constance,  he 
had  based  his  views  on  the  doctrines  which  Bohemian 
scholars  had  brought  over  from  across  the  Channel 
and  there  Wycliffe  had  preached  these  doctrines  with 
impunity  because  the  English  people  resented  the 
humiliation  by  the  Pope  of  their  king,  and  were  de- 
termined not  to  allow  their  king  to  be  a  vassal  of  the 
Pope. 

If  history  therefore  has  any  right  at  all  to  investi- 
gate the  origin  of  Christianity,  which  it  certainly  has, 
if  we  do  not  accept  the  dogma  of  its  supernatural 
origin,  then  we  know  that  not  one  person  conceived 
the  idea  of  a  new  religion  without  any  impetus  from 
outside,  but  a  number  of  men  in  successive  ages,  af- 
fected by  conditions  of  political  nature  and  by  phil- 
osophical views  then  prevalent  and  potent,  contributed 
to  build  up  what  about  the  middle  of  the  second  cen- 
tury presents  itself  to  us  as  early  Christianity.  How 
much  of  it  belongs  to  one  man  as  a  leading  spirit, 
we  can  not  know,  for  dogmatic  tendencies  have  been 
at  work  to  obscure  just  this  point.  And  this  is  not 
an  isolated  fact  in  history ;  it  is  quite  common.  There 
are  up  to  date  two  forces  at  work  in  the  narration  of 

[14] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

events  of  the  past,  the  historical  and  the  mythological ; 
the  former  tries  to  present  the  facts  as  they  really 
are,  the  latter,  as  they  might  have  been,  if  they  would 
have  been  shaped  with  a  knowledge  of  the  events 
that  grew  out  of  them  in  later  times,  and  therefore 
later  ideas  are  transferred  back  to  former  ages  and 
subjective  opinions  are  made  the  generally  accepted 
views  of  olden  times.  In  the  sixteenth  century  Cabbala 
had  taken  hold  of  religious  practice,  and,  while  for- 
merly it  was  speculative  only,  it  now  permeated  the 
daily  life  of  Judaism.  The  expounders  of  this  doc- 
trine would  never  own  their  shares  in  this  new  depar- 
ture from  Jewish  traditions ;  they  referred  it  back  to 
one  Isaac  Luria,  of  whose  teachings,  we  only  know  that 
his  disciples  mutually  accused  each  other  of  having 
put  their  own  opinions  into  the  mouth  of  the  dead 
teacher.  The  modern  expounders  of  theosophy  who 
claim  to  have  received  their  teachings  from  the  Bud- 
dhists in  Tibet  and  India,  while  men,  who  are  in  a  po- 
sition to  know  it,  state  that  there  never  existed  an 
esoteric  doctrine  of  Buddhism,  are  another  instance  of 
the  same  character.  Thus  the  views  of  Christians  in 
the  second  century,  one  of  whom  preached  abolition 
of  the  Law,  while  the  other  warned  against  such 
tendencies  as  destructive,  one  of  whom  preached  a 
universal  religion,  while  the  other  insisted  on  an  in- 
ternal reform  in  Judaism, — they  all  claimed  that  their 
views  were  the  real  teachings  of  Jesus.  Nor  are  such 
historical  delusions  limited  to  antiquity. 

[15] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

The  anecdotes  about  Washington,  Napoleon,  Bis- 
marck are  other  instances  of  the  principle  which 
makes  the  hero  of  the  past  act  in  a  way  in  which  we 
would  think  he  ought  to  have  acted.  Nearer  related 
to  our  topic  is  the  anecdote  which  makes  John  Huss 
say  on  the  stake :  ' '  This  time  you  roast  a  goose  ( Hus 
is  in  Slavic,  goose),  but  after  a  hundred  years  there 
will  appear  a  swan  whom  you  will  have  to  let  alone. ' ' 

While  there  are  instances,  in  which  real  historic 
characters  are  the  tree  on  which  the  ivy  of  mythology 
climbs  with  its  grasping  fibres,  there  are  others,  which 
show  us  a  mere  idea  personified.  This  is  the  case 
with  Ahasuerus  the  Wandering  Jew  who  is  the  per- 
sonification of  Judaism  which  did  not  die  in  spite  of 
centuries  of  persecution.  William  Tell  is  another 
instance  of  the  brave  struggle  of  the  Swiss  for  their 
independence,  personified  in  one  man.  Faust  is 
another  instance  of  the  same  character,  a  personifica- 
tion of  the  ever  repeated  attempt  of  humanity  to  solve 
the  problem  of  happiness. 

Thus,  the  biography  of  Jesus  may  be  a  fiction  of  the 
second  century,  combining  everything  which  to  men 
of  that  age  made  the  ideal  man.  In  fact  there  were 
many  widely  different  views  all  claiming  to  represent 
the  real  Christianity,  just  as  it  was  the  case  during 
the  age  of  Reformation. 

There  was  a  conservative  party,  of  men,  like  Eras- 
mus of  Rotterdam,  advanced  liberals  in  theory,  but 
strictly  conservative  in  practice.  Their  views  are 

[16] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

expounded  by  the  author  of  the  epistle  of  James  2,  17 
who  says  that  faith  without  works  is  barren  and  by 
the  author  of  Matthew  5,  19,  who  says  he  who  breaketh 
the  least  of  the  commands  shall  be  the  least  in  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  There  were  radicals  like  Carl- 
stadt  and  Thomas  Muenzer  who  denounced  the  con- 
servatives as  false  brethren  just  as  Hutten  denounced 
Erasmus,  and  who  preached  "If  ye  be  circumcised 
Christ  shall  profit  you  nothing"  (1)  and  "whosoever 
of  you  are  justified  by  the  law,  ye  are  fallen  from 
grace."  (2)  There  were  also  mediators  between  the 
two  extremes  who  like  Luther  and  Calvin  would  de- 
nounce equally  the  coolness  of  an  Erasmus  and  the 
hot-headed  radicalism  of  the  Anabaptists  and  above 
all  things  preached  unity  entreating  their  hearers  to 
set  aside  all  differences.  Circumcision  is  nothing  and 
noncircumcision  is  nothing.  Brethren  let  every  man 
wherein  he  is  called,  therein  abide  with  God.  (3) 

That  Jesus  took  a  part  in  the  foundation  of  Chris- 
tianity is  by  these  remarks  neither  affirmed  nor  de- 
nied. However  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  outside 
of  the  gospels  we  possess  no  sources  on  the  history  of 
Jesus.  A  passage  in  Suetonius'  history  of  Vespasian 
is  misinterpreted,  another  in  Josephus'  Antiquities  is 
evidently  interpolated,  the  epistle  of  Pliny  and  the  re- 
ply of  Trajan  are  forged,  the  Talmudic  reports,  far 
from  being  historical,  are  altogether  influenced  by  the 
narratives  of  the  gospels,  and  the  latter  were  written 
nearly  a  century  after  the  events  which  they  report 

[17] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

had  elapsed.  The  Talmudic  authorities  that  appear 
as  opponents  of  Christianity,  (and  in  two  instances 
as  adherents  of  the  new  doctrine)  as,  R.  Gamaliel, 
R.  Tarphon,  R.  Akiba,  R.  Ishmael,  R.  Eliezer  ben 
Hyrkanos  and  Elisha  ben  Abujah  belong  to  the 
second  century. 

To  this  negative  evidence  we  must  add  the  positive 
self-contradiction  of  New  Testament  history,  omit- 
ting all  that  is  miraculous  as  not  coming  within  the 
range  of  this  historian. 

In  the  biography  of  Jesus  we  first  are  struck  by  the 
discrepancies  of  the  two  pedigrees,  the  one  found  in 
Matthew  (1),  the  other  in  Luke  (2).  Both  writers 
inform  us  that  Jesus  was  the  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary, 
but  Joseph's  father  in  Matthew  is  named  Jacob,  while 
Luke  calls  him  Eli.  Eli's  father  is  Mathat,  while 
Jacob's  father  is  called  Mathan.  If  in  this  case  we 
would  overlook  the  slight  difference,  we  would  gain 
nothing,  for  Mathat 's  father  is  Levi,  while  Mathan 's 
father  is  Eleazar  and  so  the  whole  lineage  differs,  only 
David  and  Shaltiel  and  his  son  Zerubabel  being  com- 
mon to  both,  but  with  the  son  of  David  the  difference 
begins ;  Matthew  tracing  Jesus '  descent  from  Solomon 
and  Luke  from  Nathan,  another  son  of  David; 
Matthew  counting  twenty-six  generations  from  David 
to  Jesus,  Luke  forty-one,  and  to  remove  the  possibility 
of  supposing  that  Matthew  omitted  some  names,  the 
latter  states  expressly  that  there  were  fourteen  gen- 

[18] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

erations  from  David  until  the  Babylonian  exile,  and 
fourteen  from  the  exile  unto  Christ. 

The  only  way  out  of  this  difficulty  is  to  admit 
frankly,  that  both  pedigrees  are  fictitious  and  based 
on  no  other  records  except  on  the  conviction  that 
Jesus  was  the  Messiah,  and  therefore  had  to  be  of 
Davidic  origin.  Must  we  not  ask  ourselves,  after  the 
authors  had  invented  so  many  names,  would  their 
conscience  have  warned  them  against  the  invention 
of  one  more  name,  and  could  they  not  have  derived  the 
name  of  Jesus,  too,  from  the  inexhaustible  archives 
of  their  imagination  ? 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  report  concerning 
the  place  of  Jesus'  birth.  In  both  gospels  that  contain 
the  history  of  Jesus'  youth  we  are  told  that  he  was 
born  at  Bethlehem,  while  otherwise  his  home  is 
Nazareth,  he  is  always  called  Jesus  of  Nazareth  (3) 
and  his  followers  the  sect  of  the  Nazarenes  (4).  Luke 
seems  to  have  felt  this  difficulty  and  he  apparently 
tells  us  the  story  of  the  taxation  (5)  to  make  it  plaus- 
ible that  Jesus'  parents  left  their  home  temporarily 
for  Bethlehem. 

But  there  is  another  difficulty :  first  of  all  we  do  not 
know  from  reliable  sources  that  such  a  census  of  the 
whole  Roman  empire  as  Luke  expressly  states, 
ever  took  place  under  the  reign  of  Augustus,  but  even 
if  such  a  remarkable  event  should  have  taken  place 
without  being  recorded,  it  could  not  have  taken  place 
while  Herod  was  king,  for  the  Romans,  although  they 

[19] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

could  levy  tribute  from  a  country  that  had  its  own 
king,  could  not  assess  the  individual  citizens.  It 
would  have  been  the  same  thing  as  if  the  United  States 
were  to  assess  the  people  of  Venezuela. 

It  is  so  much  the  less  likely  as  the  first  census  after 
the  expulsion  of  Archelaus,  i.  e.  about  ten  years  after 
this  supposed  event,  caused  a  revolution  amongst  the 
Jews,  who  not  only  resented  this  manifestation  of 
Roman  sovereignty  but  objected  to  it  on  religious 
grounds.  (1)  And  so  strongly  they  objected  to  it, 
that  the  word  "Kenas"  census  meant  to  them  fine  or 
punishment.  Is  it  likely  that  they  would  have 
tolerated  the  first  census  and  objected  to  the  second? 
But  even  this  is  not  all.  The  census  is  said  to 
have  taken  place  when  Cyrenius  was  governor  of 
Syria,  but  Jesus  was  born,  while  Herod  was  king  and 
Cyrenius  was  appointed  governor  about  ten  years 
after  Herod 's  death.  If  we  should  overlook  all  these 
difficulties,  there  would  still  remain  some  more.  A 
citizen  had  to  appear  before  the  assessor  of  his  city, 
for  only  there  was  he  known.  What  should  the 
Romans  care  about  the  supposed  Davidic  descent 
of  Joseph?  It  were  just  as  if  my  grandchildren 
should  be  cited  before  the  assessor,  not  of  my  native 
town,  but  before  the  assessor  at  Brunswick,  whence 
two  hundred  years  ago  my  eighth  ancestor  emigrated. 
And  granted  even  that,  what  necessity  was  there  for 
Mary  in  her  delicate  condition  to  journey  to  Bethle- 
hem ?  Yes,  there  was  one  reason.  The  reason  that  she 

[20] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

should  give  birth  to  the  Messiah  who  according  to  a 
misinterpreted  passage  in  the  prophet  Micah  (2)  was 
to  be  born  in  that  city  and  according  to  another  mis- 
interpreted passage  in  Genesis  (3)  before  Judea  would 
lose  its  independence  that  is,  while  Herod  was  yet 
king  and  before  the  first  taxation  had  made  it  mani- 
fest that  Judea  had  ceased  to  be  an  independent  king- 
dom. The  whole  story  is  therefore  a  fabrication  of 
which  dogmatic  tendencies  are  the  only  reliable  basis. 
Time  does  not  permit  that  I  should  go  through  the 
whole  history  of  Jesus.  Let  it  suffice  to  state  that 
the  account  given  by  Matthew  (4)  according  to  which 
Jesus  with  his  parents  went  from  Bethlehem  to 
Egypt  is  irreconcilable  with  the  account  given  by 
Luke  (5)  according  to  which  they  repaired  from 
Bethlehem  to  Jerusalem.  The  story  of  Jesus'  dis- 
putation in  the  temple,  when  he  was  twelve  years 
(6)  old,  is  highly  improbable.  According  to  one 
account  given  by  both  Matthew  (7)  and  Luke,  (8) 
John  the  Baptist  heard  only  in  prison  of  Jesus  and 
sent  disciples  asking  Jesus  whether  (9)  or  not  he  was 
the  expected  Messiah,  but,  according  to  another 
account  John  refused  to  grant  Jesus'  request  to  be 
baptised  by  him,  saying :  "I  have  need  to  be  baptised 
by  thee"  and  after  he  had  yielded  to  Jesus'  request, 
the  heavens  were  opened  and  the  spirit  of  God  de- 
scended like  a  dove  and  a  voice  was  heard  saying: 
"This  is  my  beloved  son."  I  should  think  this  would 
have  satisfied  the  most  skeptically  inclined  agnostic. 

[21] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

In  another  account  John,  when  he  first  saw  Jesus 
exclaimed:  ''Behold  the  lamb  of  God"  (10)  and 
finally  according  to  Luke,  (11)  John  when  still  in  the 
womb  greeted  Jesus,  who  was  his  cousin,  as  the  Lord. 
Here  we  have  decidedly  a  growing  tendency  to  mark 
the  relation  of  John  to  Jesus  as  that  of  a  forerunner  of 
the  Messiah. 

The  first  report  made  John  testify  to  Jesus  shortly 
before  his  death,  the  second  at  the  baptism,  the  third 
when  he  first  saw  him,  the  fourth  when  he  was  an 
unborn  baby  in  the  womb.  Similarly  the  accounts 
of  Jesus'  greatest  miracle,  the  resurrection  of  the 
dead,  show  a  gradation.  According  to  Mark  and 
Luke  (1)  the  daughter  of  Jair  was  dying  when  Jesus 
was  called  to  heal  her;  according  to  Matthew  (2) 
she  had  just  died  when  the  father  called  him  but  in 
all  three  reports  she  was  dead  when  Jesus  entered 
the  house.  Luke  (3)  records  the  resurrection  of  the 
son  of  the  widow  of  Nain,  who  was  carried  out  to  the 
cemetery  when  Jesus  stopped  the  funeral  procession 
and  revived  him.  John  evidently  finds  this  account 
not  a  sufficient  evidence  of  Jesus'  Messianic  powers 
and  records  the  resurrection  of  Lazarus  (4)  who  was 
already  four  days  in  the  tomb  and  to  remove  all 
doubt  concerning  his  death,  Martha,  his  sister  says: 
"Lord,  by  this  time  he  stinketh."  (5)  The  only  con- 
clusion remains  that  these  stories  were  invented  to 
prove  Jesus'  Messianic  powers. 

Another  difficulty  is  the  record  of  Judas'  treachery. 

[22] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

I  forego  the  question  why  Jesus,  knowing  beforehand 
that  Judas  would  betray  him,  made  him  his  disciple. 
I  only  ask  why  was  it  necessary  for  the  Sanhedrin  to 
hire  a  traitor?  Surely  not  for  a  testimony  to  Jesus' 
doctrine.  He  had  preached  it  to  multitudes  (6)  and 
had  driven  the  money  changers  out  of  the  temple. 
(7)  It  was  not  necessary  to  know  his  hiding  place,  for 
he  did  not  hide  himself;  besides  Judas  did  not  content 
himself  to  show  Jesus'  hiding  place  but  he  gave  to  the 
soldiers  a  sign  by  kissing  Jesus,  (8)  which  would  only 
have  a  sense,  if  it  was  the  person,  not  the  place  which 
had  to  be  betrayed.  Now,  we  ask,  was  it  worth  30 
pieces  of  silver,  about  five  dollars,  to  point  out  a  man 
whom  the  whole  city  had  hailed  with  Hosannas,  whom 
the  children  had  proclaimed  the  son  of  David  (10) 
who  had  discussed  his  ideas  with  the  priests  as  well  as 
with  the  heads  of  the  Pharisees  and  Sadducees  ?  This 
is  a  problem  which  can  only  be  solved,  if  we  deny  all 
historical  basis  of  it,  and  understand  Judas  only  as  a 
type  of  the  Jewish  unbelief  and,  may  be,  that  the 
name  Iskarioth  is  to  be  derived  from  "skakrutlia" 
man  of  falsehood.  One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  is  the 
celebration  of  the  Passover,  which  gave  origin  to  the 
ecclesiastic  rite  of  the  Lord's  supper.  The  three 
synoptic  gospels  make  Jesus  celebrate  the  Passover 
on  the  night  of  the  festival  in  Jerusalem,  (11)  while 
the  fourth  gospel  (12)  states  expressly  that  it  was 
celebrated  at  Bethany  six  days  before  the  Passover. 
Prof.  Daniel  Chwolson  a  few  years  ago  with  the 

[23] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

zeal  of  the  convert  attempted  to  solve  this  difficulty 
by  retranslating,  as  he  thought,  the  text  into  Aramaic. 
The  attempt  is  a  failure.  The  only  solution  possible 
is  this:  The  Judeo-Christians  had  retained  the 
solemn  rite  of  the  Seder-evening  just  as  many  in  our 
days  who  are  entirely  estranged  from  the  Jewish 
community  will  go  to  the  Synagog  when  they  have 
Yahrzeit. 

The  custom  had  such  a  powerful  influence  that 
even  the  proselytes  from  paganism  celebrated  it.  By 
and  by  the  original  meaning  was  lost  or  rather  was 
found  inconvenient,  just  as  our  people  would  not 
trace  back  our  lamp  on  the  Yahrzeit  to  usages  of  the 
Catholic  mass  or  to  ancestor-worship  of  the  pagan 
world,  and  so  Jesus  had  to  establish  the  Passover 
anew.  The  more  conservative  element  made  Him 
celebrate  the  Passover  in  the  traditional  Jewish  way 
and  give  another  meaning  to  it.  It  is  not  any  more 
the  Exodus  that  shall  be  remembered,  but  the  death 
of  Jesus  who  took  his  last  meal  on  earth  promising  to 
his  followers,  as  he  was  sure  to  receive  it,  the  new  wine 
from  the  hands  of  the  father,  (Mat.  26,  29).  The 
radical  Christians  would  not  admit  this  origin  of  the 
Lord's  supper.  Therefore  Jesus  had  to  celebrate  his 
meal  not  in  Jerusalem,  and  on  the  14th  of  the  Nissan, 
but  in  Bethany  and  six  days  earlier.  So  the  dogma 
is  the  source  of  the  history,  and  not  the  history  the 
source  of  the  dogma. 

The  difficult  and  intricate  problem  of  Jesus'  teach- 

[24] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ings  I  can  only  treat  in  two  instances:  His  position 
to  the  law  and,  what  is  closely  connected  with  this,  the 
mission  of  Israel  to  the  heathen-world.  The  gen- 
erally accepted  theory  is  that  Christianity  taught  the 
law  merely  as  a  symbol  of  certain  ideas  and  that 
Judaism  must  cease  to  be  clannish  and  take  the 
heathen  world  into  its  fold,  or,  while  Pharisean 
Rabbinical  Judaism  regarded  these  things  as  a  distant 
ideal,  Christianity  wished  them  to  be  put  into  im- 
mediate effect. 

The  question  now  remains:  Did  Jesus  himself 
already  teach  these  doctrines?  Let  us  consult  the 
sources:  According  to  Matthew  he  says:  "Think 
not  that  I  am  come  to  destroy  the  Law  or  Prophets 
but  to  fulfill ;  for  verily  I  say  unto  you,  till  earth  or 
heaven  pass,  one  jot  or  one  tittle  shall  in  no  wise  pass 
from  the  law,  till  all  be  fulfilled."  "Whosoever  shall 
break  one  of  the  least  commandments  and  shall  teach 
men  so,  he  shall  be  called  the  least  in  the  kingdom  of 
heaven:  for  I  say  unto  you,  that  except  your  right- 
eousness shall  exceed  the  righteousness  of  the  scribes 
and  the  Pharisees,  ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,"  (ib,  5,  17-20).  If  we  translate 
this  into  our  modern  way  of  speaking,  Jesus  said: 
One  who  would  not  observe  all  the  minutias  of  the 
law,  "the  dot  on  the  i"  (Menahot  29,  a),  does  not  de- 
serve the  name  of  a  Christian.  The  sentiment  is 
quite  Jewish  and  a  parallel  passage  is  found  in  the 
Midrash,  (Exod.  Rabba  C.  6)  where  it  reads:  "King 

[25] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Solomon  and  thousands  like  him  shall  perish  but  not 
a  dot  on  the  "i"  shall  perish  from  the  law."  Chris- 
tianity according  to  this  doctrine  is  only  something 
accessory  to  the  teachings  of  Rabbinical  Judaism. 
The  Greek  word  "plerosai"  may  have  the  meaning 
"to  add  to"  or  "to  complete"  by  bringing  to  the  light 
the  real  meaning.  We  can  accept  it  only  in  the 
former  sense  for  the  quotation  of  this  passage  in  the 
Talmud  (Sabbath  116,  b)  has  in  its  place  "le-osofe  al" 
which  unmistakably  means  to  add  to.  While  here 
the  law  is  regarded  as  essential  to  Christianity,  Jesus 
according  to  Luke  (16,  26)  says:  the  law  and  the 
prophets  were  until  John,  since  that  time  the  kingdom 
of  God  is  preached,  which  evidently  means  that  since 
Christianity  arose,  the  law  lost  all  obligatory 
character.  While  according  to  Matthew  (Mat. 
5,  18)  Jesus  taught  that  heaven  and  earth  would 
sooner  pass  than  a  word  of  the  law,  according  to  Luke 
(16,  17)  Jesus  complains  that  it  is  easier  for  heaven 
and  earth  to  pass  than  for  one  tittle  of  the  law  to  fall. 
Furthermore,  the  three  synoptic  gospels  (Mat.  9, 
16,  Me.  2,  21,  Luc.  5,  36)  contain  the  parable:  No 
man  putteth  a  piece  of  a  new  garment  on  an  old  and 
no  man  putteth  new  wine  into  old  wine  skins.  This 
means  clearly  a  radical  view  of  the  law.  No  patch- 
work, no  conservative  reform,  no  regard  for  tradition ! 
Luke  who  more  than  the  other  evangelists  preaches 
this  radicalism  adds:  No  man  also  having  drunk  old 
wine  straightway  desireth  new  for  he  saith,  the  old  is 

[26] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

better.  (Luc.  4,  39.)  That  is  exactly  the  point:  If 
you  tolerate  tradition,  you  put  yourself  in  the  wrong, 
just  as  the  Catholic  would  say  to  the  Episcopalian : 
If  the  church  is  a  divine  institution,  why  not  accept 
the  pope? 

The  toleration  of  the  law  is  the  view  which  accord- 
ing to  Matthew  (19,  16-22)  is  Jesus'  principle.  When 
a  young  man  asks  him:  ''What  good  thing  shall 
I  do,  that  I  may  have  eternal  life?"  Jesus  answers 
straightway:  "Keep  the  commandments,"  and  when 
the  young  man  says:  "All  these  things  I  have  kept 
from  my  youth,  what  lack  I  yet  ? ' '  Jesus  says :  ' '  Sell 
all  that  thou  hast  and  give  it  to  the  poor. ' '  There  we 
see  the  principle  of  the  fulfillment  in  the  sense  of 
adding  righteousness  to  the  observance  of  the  law. 

The  same  story  is  found  in  the  other  gospels,  but 
both  Mark  and  Luke  (Me.  10,  19 ;  Luc.  18,  20)  say 
instead  of  "Keep  the  commandments"  "thou  knowest 
the  commandments."  Evidently  they  avoided  to 
make  Jesus  say  that  one  should  keep  the  command- 
ments. Stronger  still  is  the  declaration  against  the 
law,  found  in  an  incident,  told  with  slight  variations 
by  both  Matthew  and  Luke.  (Mt.  8,  19-22;  Luc.  9, 
57-62.)  A  disciple  wishes  to  join  Jesus,  but  he  first 
would  bury  his  father.  Jesus  says :  ' '  Let  the  dead  bury 
their  dead."  We  can  understand  this  only,  when  we 
present  to  ourselves  the  rabbinical  view,  that  to  bury 
the  dead  is  the  foremost  duty  (Moed  Katan  27,  b)  and 
is  one  that  brings  man  to  eternal  life.  (Mishnah, 

[27] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Peah  I,  1.)  To  bury  his  father  is  even  permitted  to 
the  priest  (Lev.  21,  2)  who  otherwise  is  not  allowed 
to  defile  himself  by  coming  into  contact  with  a  dead 
body.  Therefore  Jesus  emphasizes  that  to  preach  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  stands  higher  than  to  observe  even 
the  highest  commandments. 

Another  telling  story  which  only  Luke  (10,  38-42) 
has,  presents  this  view  in  stronger  words.  Jesus 
entered  the  house  of  Martha;  Martha  was  cumbered 
about  much  service,  while  her  sister  Mary  was 
sitting  at  Jesus'  feet  and  heard  his  words.  When 
Martha  complained,  Jesus  said  to  her :  ' '  Thou  art  care- 
ful about  many  things  but  one  thing  is  needful :  and 
Mary  has  chosen  that  good  part,  which  shall  not  be 
taken  away  from  her."  Martha  represents  Judaism 
which  is  troubled  about  many  laws,  while  Mary  who 
is  the  type  of  Christianity  which  instead  of  observing 
the  many  laws  only  listens  to  Jesus'  preaching  of  the 
kingdom,  the  one  thing  needful,  and  so  she  has  chosen 
the  good  part  which  shall  never  be  taken  away  from 
her. 

The  strongest  condemnation  of  the  law  as  worth- 
less, when  compared  with  the  belief  in  Jesus,  is  the 
story  of  Jesus'  anointment,  which  with  some  varia- 
tions appears  in  all  the  four  gospels  (Mat.  26,  6-13; 
Me.  14,  3-9;  Luc.  7,  36-50;  John  12,  1-9)  but  most 
manifest  in  its  meaning  it  appears  in  John. 

Jesus  enters  the  house  of  Martha  and  Mary  in 
Bethany.  Mary,  the  representative  of  Christianity, 

[28] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

poured  out  a  pint  of  ointment,  which  was  worth  300 
Denars,  on  his  feet,  and  Judas  Iscariot  said  that  this 
ointment  should  rather  have  been  sold  and  given  to 
the  poor.  This  he  said,  not  because  he  cared  for  the 
poor,  but  because,  as  the  evangelist  suggests,  Judas 
was  the  treasurer  of  the  small  society,  and  could  have 
made  some  money  by  this  transaction,  but  Jesus  said : 
"Let  her  alone,  for  the  poor  you  have  always  with 
you,  but  me  you  have  not  always  with  you."  In  this 
parable — so  to  speak — even  charity  is  deprecated  in 
comparison  with  the  belief  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 
And  it  is  most  noteworthy  that  John  makes  Judas 
instead  of  all  the  disciples,  as  the  other  gospels  have  it, 
the  interpreter  of  this  dissatisfaction  and  discredits 
his  motives.  This  is  therefore  the  strongest  contra- 
diction of  the  Jewish  doctrines  that  charity  secures 
man  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

The  same  tendencies,  viz :  a  commendation  of  works 
as  laudable  and  indispensable,  an  indifference  towards 
them,  and  finally  a  decided  condemnation  of  all  ob- 
servances as  obnoxious  appears  in  the  epistles.  James, 
no  doubt  the  apostle  of  Judseo-Christians,  known  in 
the  Talmud  (Aboda  Zara,  17,  a)  as  Jacob  of  Sakanja, 
says :  ' '  What  doth  it  profit  though  a  man  say  he  hath 
faith,  and  have  no  works?"  (James  2,  14).  Exactly 
the  opposite  view  is  held  by  the  author  of  the  epistle 
to  the  Galatians,  who  calls  the  law  a  curse  from  which 
Christ  hath  redeemed  us  (Gal.  3,  13),  and  finally  a 
mediating  position  is  taken  by  the  author  of  the  epistle 

[29] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

to  the  Corinthians,  who  says:  "Circumcision  and 
uncircumcision  is  nothing  but  the  keeping  of  the 
commandments  of  God,"  (I.  Cor.  7,  19)  and  similarly 
the  author  of  Romans,  for  ' '  circumcision  verily  profit- 
eth,  if  thou  keep  the  law."  (Rom.  2,  25).  In  the  same 
way,  as  this  important  question,  whether  the  law 
should  be  observed,  tolerated  or  rejected,  was  the  plat- 
form on  which  the  first  Christians  were  divided,  so 
was  the  attitude  towards  the  pagan  world,  and  just 
as  each  faction  made  Jesus  the  expounder  of  its  par- 
ticular views  in  the  former  case,  so  they  did  in  the 
latter. 

Matthew  makes  Jesus  denounce  strictly  all  missions 
to  the  heathen.  "Go  not,"  he  says  to  the  twelve  dis- 
ciples, "into  the  way  of  the  Gentiles,  and  into  any 
city  of  the  Samaritans  enter  ye  not,  but  go  rather  to 
the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel."  (Mat.  10,  67.) 

In  another  instance  he  is  approached  by  a  Canaani- 
tish  woman  (Mat.  15,  21-28;  Me.  7,  24-30)  who  begs 
him  to  heal  her  daughter  who  is  grievously  vexed 
with  a  devil,  and  he,  at  first  not  taking  any  notice  of 
her,  on  the  entreating  by  his  disciple  says:  "I  am 
not  sent  but  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel," 
but  the  woman  would  not  desist,  and  so  he  answers 
her:  "It  is  not  meet  to  take  the  children's  bread, 
and  to  cast  it  to  the  dogs."  And  when  the  woman 
cleverly  applies  the  adage  of  no  rule  without  excep- 
tion to  her  case,  saying:  "Yet  the  dogs  eat  of  the 
crumbs  which  fall  from  their  master's  table,"  he 

[30] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

reluctantly  complied  with  her  request.  It  is  of  great 
importance  that  Luke  omitted  this  story  entirely, 
because  he  would  not  admit  that  Jesus  called  the 
heathens  dogs,  and  that  Mark  mitigates  it  somewhat 
omitting  the  words  ' '  Let  the  children  first  be  filled, ' ' 
so  indicating  that  the  heathen  world  should  not  be 
excluded  from  salvation  entirely. 

Just  the  opposite  tendency  is  manifest  in  the  story 
of  the  centurion  of  Capernaum  (Mat.  8,  5-13;  Luc.  7, 
1-10)  who  came  to  beg  Jesus  that  he  might  heal  his 
servant,  and  Jesus,  being  struck  by  his  faith  said: 
' '  I  have  not  found  so  great  faith,  no,  not  in  Israel,  and 
I  say  unto  you  many  shall  come  from  the  east  and 
west,  and  shall  sit  down  with  Abraham,  with  Isaac 
and  Jacob  in  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  But  the  children 
of  the  kingdom  shall  be  cast  out  into  outer  darkness, 
there  shall  be  weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth."  In  our 
modern  language  this  means  the  heathen  shall  be  in 
heaven  and  the  Jews  shall  be  in  hell. 

The  parable  of  the  vineyard  (Mat.  21,  33-46;  Me. 
12,  1-12;  Luc.  20,  9-19)  in  which  the  owner  whose 
son  was  killed  by  the  tenants,  destroyeth  the  tenants 
and  gives  the  vineyard  to  others,  clearly  means  that 
the  Gentiles  shall  take  the  place  of  Israel.  And  so 
repeatedly  Jesus  is  made  to  say,  the  gospel  must  first 
be  preached  to  the  gentiles.  (Me.  13,  10).  The  story 
of  the  Samaritan  (Luc.  10,  29-37)  who  took  care  of 
the  wounded  man  while  a  priest  and  a  Levite  passed 
by  without  rendering  assistance,  is  told  by  Luke  ex- 

[31] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

clusively  to  show  that  the  Jews  are  not  any  more  the 
bearers  of  the  divine  spirit,  and  therefore  according  to 
Luke,  Jesus  refuses  to  accede  to  the  wishes  of  his  dis- 
ciples that  he  might  curse  the  Samaritans,  while  the 
order  given  to  the  disciples  in  Matthew  not  to  enter 
the  cities  of  the  Samaritans  shows  the  opposite  ten- 
dency. 

Thus  we  see  that  even  in  this  case,  tendencies  which 
agitated  the  minds  of  the  early  Christians,  not  later 
than  in  the  second  century,  are  referred  back  to  Jesus ; 
for  in  the  first  century  Rabban  Gamaliel  defends  a 
friendly  attitude  to  the  Samaritans  (Weiss.  Gesch. 
Jued.  Trad.  II.  74)  and  consequently  they  were  not 
held  in  so  low  an  esteem  by  the  Jews,  as  the  gospel 
describes  it. 

How  are  we  to  solve  the  question  of  Jesus '  genuine 
teachings,  and  the  real  doctrines  of  early  Christianity  ? 
The  only  possible  answer  is :  Dogmas  were  made  into 
historical  facts  and  thoughts  were  referred  back  to 
earlier  times,  just  as  the  Catholics  of  today  would 
prove  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope  from  Jesus'  words 
or  as  Rabbi  Ezekiel  Landau  (Z'lach  p.  39.  d.)  would 
prove  from  the  Talmud  that  the  study  of  Hebrew 
grammar  as  advocated  by  the  Mendelssohn  school  was 
dangerous,  while  Leon  Modena  (Haboneh,  Kiddushin 
2.  b)  would  prove  that  the  Talmud  commends  the 
study  of  grammar. 

We  must  try  to  understand  the  great  crisis  of  the 
destruction  of  the  temple,  the  death  blow  which  cruel 

[32] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

reality  dealt  the  Messianic  hopes.  The  Messiah  had 
not  preserved  the  temple,  he  had  not  established  the 
kingdom  of  God,  which  should  include  the  heathen 
world,  as  Daniel  (12,  1-3)  had  prophesied.  The  dead 
had  not  been  resurrected.  What  wonder  that  the 
progressive  party  concluded,  that  God  did  not  care 
to  preserve  the  temple  and  Israel's  worldly  kingdom, 
but  that  his  kingdom  would  soon  be  established  as  one 
that  is  not  of  this  world,  that  the  dead  then  should  rise, 
the  people  should  then  make  themselves  worthy  of  this 
kingdom  by  turning  away  from  worldly  pleasures,  that 
Jews  should  do  missionary  work  amongst  the  heathens, 
that  what  the  Rabbis  had  taught  as  an  ideal,  the  view 
that  to  love  one's  neighbor  is  the  whole  law,  that  the 
gentiles  who  lived  a  righteous  moral  life  and  ab- 
stained from  idolatry,  are  God-fearing  people,  should 
be  practically  acknowledged.  What  is  this  theory  for, 
they  exclaimed,  let  us  put  it  into  practice  at  once, 
and  in  this  way  they  constructed  the  picture  of 
Jesus,  the  ideal  man,  a  utopia  referred  back  into  the 
past,  as  Thomas  Moore,  Bebel  and  Bellamy  referred 
theirs  to  the  future. 

The  question  that  agitates  us  is :  How  do  we  under- 
stand the  claims  of  Christianity?  To  answer  this, 
we  must  ask  first :  What  is  Christianity  ?  The  belief 
that  mankind,  overburdened  with  sins  had  to  perish, 
for  God  in  his  righteousness  could  not  pardon  them, 
therefore  he  accepted  the  sacrifice  of  His  son,  who, 
though  sinless,  died  the  death  of  a  criminal,  and  this 

[33] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

meritorious  self  sacrifice  outbalanced  the  sins  of  the 
whole  world,  present  and  future.  This  doctrine  we 
cannot  accept.  We  believe  in  the  great  truth,  every- 
one shall  die  for  his  own  sin.  Liberal  Christians  have 
long  ago  given  up  this  theory,  and  the  philosopher 
Schleiermacher  has  reconstructed  the  doctrine  by 
declaring  Jesus  to  be  the  divine  man,  the  man  who 
in  himself  combined  all  the  ideals  of  mankind. 
Against  this  theory  there  was  objected,  that  not  one 
man  but  only  mankind  represents  the  human  ideal, 
and  even  mankind  for  a  certain  period  of  time. 
Aristotle  was  no  poet,  Michelangelo  no  philosopher, 
Goethe  no  sculptor,  and  the  classic  age  of  the  Greeks 
as  a  whole  is  inferior  to  ours  in  mechanic  arts,  in  nat- 
ural science,  in  statescraft  and  in  many  other  things. 
Then  the  belief  in  Jesus  as  the  ideal  man  was  re- 
stricted to  his  ethical  teachings,  but  even  to  this  we 
cannot  subscribe.  The  Jesus  of  the  gospel  despised 
family  life.  He  says  to  his  mother:  "Woman,  what 
have  I  to  do  with  thee"  (John  2,  4).  He  would  not 
permit  his  disciple  to  attend  the  funeral  of  his  father. 
(Mat.  8,  22.)  Jesus  finds  no  merit  in  any  practical 
pursuit.  He  says:  "He  who  putteth  his  hand  to  the 
plow  and  looketh  backward  is  not  fit  for  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,"  (Luc.  9,  62.)  Jesus  regards  wealth, 
no  matter  how  honestly  acquired,  as  sinful.  He  says 
to  the  young  man:  "Take  all  that  thou  hast  and 
give  it  to  the  poor."  (Mat.  19,  21).  The  rich  man  is 
in  hell  suffering  agonizing  pain,  poor  Lazarus  is  in 

[34] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Abraham's  bosom,  and  yet  is  it  not  said  that  the  rich 
man  was  a  sinner  and  Lazarus  was  righteous,  but  the 
one  suffers  in  the  hereafter  because  he  had  received 
his  share  of  happiness  already,  the  other  is  happy, 
because  he  was  miserable  on  earth.  (Luc.  16,  19-31). 
Jesus  despises  science  and  praises  those  that  are  poor 
in  spirit  (Mat.  5,  3)  and  although  this  by  some  apolo- 
gists is  understood  to  mean  the  meek  and  lowly, 
(Prov.  16,  19)  it  is  not  so,  for  the  meek  are  mentioned 
afterwards  and  R.  Eliezer  ben  Hyrkanos  who  stood 
nearest  the  Christians,  teaches:  Keep  your  children 
away  from  speculation  and  through  this  you  shall  in- 
herit eternal  life.  (Berakoth  28,  b.)  At  all  events 
Jesus  is  indifferent  to  science.  Jesus  commands  a 
passive  attitude  to  the  state,  to  the  highest  interests 
of  his  country  and  his  people.  He  says  when  ques- 
tioned about  the  important  issue  of  the  tribute  money : 
"Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's, 
and  unto  God  the  things  which  are  God's"  (Mat.  22, 
21).  No  word  of  encouragement  for  the  struggle  of 
his  people  for  independence;  no  word  about  Caesar's 
tyranny  who  revelled  in  luxury  on  the  earnings  of 
hard-working  people,  no  word  of  condemnation  for 
the  outrageous  practices  of  the  Roman  officials.  He 
preaches  unconditioned  submission.  Still  even  Mai- 
monides  (Moreh  II.,  37)  admitted  that  Jesus  was  a 
divine  instrument,  or  as  we  put  it:  Christianity 
fulfilled  a  mission  in  the  world.  Judaism  at  that 
time  missed  the  opportunity  to  become  a  universal 

[35] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

religion  by  intrenching  itself  behind  the  breastwork 
of  its  national  hopes  and  traditional  customs.  It 
suffered  for  it  terribly.  The  flames  of  the  fagots  on 
which  innocent  men  and  women  sang  "in  thy  hand  I 
commend  my  soul,"  made  the  heavens  lurid.  From 
the  dungeons  and  racks  resounded  the  cries  of  the 
tortured.  The  descendants  of  those  whom  Christians 
acknowledged  as  the  beloved  of  God  were  mercilessly 
expelled  from  one  country  and  debarred  from  another. 
Have  they  suffered  in  vain  ?  No,  they  have  not.  They 
taught  the  world  the  lesson  of  the  highest  liberty, 
the  liberty  of  conscience.  They  worked  in  narrower 
confines,  it  is  true,  but  their  work  was  so  much  the 
more  thorough  and  complete.  They  assisted  the  poor 
in  unselfish  manner,  they  cultivated  exemplary  family 
relations,  they  created  the  concept  of  fear  of  God  as 
self  restraint  as  "Dabar  hamasur  laleb,"  they  made 
charity  a  duty  of  justice,  "Zedakah"  which  is  higher 
than  love.  Yea,  even  their  ceremonialism  had  its  great 
merits.  It  produced  a  Yom  Kippurim,  a  day  that 
taught  the  lesson  of  contrition  and  self-humiliation 
and  fostered  the  sense  of  responsibility  for  one's  deeds. 
Let  me  abide  by  this  reminiscence.  Before  my  eyes 
there  arises  the  synagog  of  my  native  city  on  Kippur 
eve.  It  is  late.  Most  of  the  worshippers  have  left  the 
house,  few  only  are  present,  reciting  the  Psalms,  and 
I  see  my  good  old  father  in  his  white  gown,  covered 
with  a  Tallith,  standing  before  the  ark,  and  I  hear 
him  recite  the  touching  mystical  prayer,  in  a  voice 

[36] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

trembling  with  emotion:  "As  we  recite  these  Psalms 
this  day,  so  may  it  be  our  lot  to  sing  thy  praises  in  the 
world  to  come,  and  may  the  rose  of  Sharon  be  awak- 
ened to  sing  with  a  voice  jubilant  and  rejoicing,  the 
glory  of  the  Lebanon  may  be  given  to  her;  magnifi- 
cence, majesty  in  the  house  of  our  God.  Amen. 
Selah." 


37  J 


Ill 

THE  PROTESTANT  REFORMATION  AND 
JUDAISM.* 

Heinrich  Graetz,  the  centenary  of  whose  birth  was 
celebrated  all  over  the  Jewish  world  a  few  months 
ago,  speaking  of  the  Hussite  movement,  makes  the 
brilliant  remark  that  every  attempt  to  deepen  the 
religious  sentiment  within  the  church,  started  from  a 
return  to  the  Old  Testament.  (Graetz:  Geschichte, 
VIII,  130-131.  3d.  ed.)  Indeed  the  Hussites  named 
their  principal  fortress  Tabor,  and  the  Puritans  of 
New  England  are  in  every  modern  American  novel 
characterized  by  the  most  unusual  Old  Testament 
names. 

Again  speaking  of  Luther's  movement  the  master 
historian  of  Judaism  makes  the  somewhat  flippant 
remark  that  the  only  beneficial  effect  which  the  great 
upheaval  of  the  Christian  church  had  on  the  Jews 
was  the  negative  boon  that  the  contending  parties 
within  the  Church  were  so  busy  fighting  their  own 
battles  that  there  was  no  time  left  to  them  to  harass 
the  Jews.  (ib.  IX,  196,  3d.  ed.)  Graetz  in  his  case 
yielded  to  a  prompting  of  temper  which  is  claimed  as 
typically  Jewish.  An  antisemitic  essayist  once  said 


*  Address,  delivered  at  the  Second  Annual  Spring  Conference  of  the 
Chicago   Rabbinical  Association,   April   8,    1918. 

[38] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

that  a  Jew  would  kill  his  own  father,  if  it  would  be 
needed  for  a  clever  pun.  This  is  no  doubt  one  of  the 
exaggerations  in  which  the  enemies  of  Judaism  often 
indulge  in  order  to  make  their  arguments  more  im- 
pressive, but  in  this  individual  case  it  does  seem  that 
Graetz  preferred  being  clever  to  being  guided  by  his- 
toric temper. 

With  the  exception  of  the  Unitarian  movement 
which,  remarkably  enough,  arose  in  the  Latin  coun- 
tries, Spain  and  Italy,  where  the  revised  Christianity 
of  Luther,  Calvin  and  Zwingli  found  the  least  fertile 
soil,  none  of  the  various  Protestant  churches  that  were 
established  in  the  sixteenth  century,  could  see  in 
Judaism  more  than  an  anachronism,  and  in  rarest 
cases  even  a  sincere  and  sympathetic  anachronism, 
such  as  High  Church  Episcopolians  might  see  in  the 
Quaker  church.  Yet  the  mere  fact  that  all  Protes- 
tant churches  started  as  minorities  and  for  centuries 
afterwards  had  to  protect  followers  who  were  hope- 
less minorities  in  lands  of  intolerance,  necessitated 
their  insistence  on  the  principle  of  freedom  of  con- 
science, usually  not  as  a  theory,  but  as  an  accommo- 
dation to  existing  conditions.  A  clear  case  is  found 
in  a  letter,  written  by  Landgrave  William  IV  of 
Hesse  to  his  brother  Ludwig  in  1570.  A  pastor, 
named  Nigrinus,  who  was  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
Landgrave  Ludwig  had  published  a  book  whose  title : 
"Jew-hater"  (Juedenfeind,  oder  von  den  edelen 
Fruechten  der  talmudischen  Jueden,  so  itziger  Zeit  in 

[39] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Deutschland  wohnen.  Giessen,  1570)  sufficiently  char- 
acterizes the  author's  tendency.  Landgrave  William 
reproaches  his  brother  for  tolerating  such  an  agitation, 
for,  so  he  argues,  if  arguments  like  those  of  Pastor 
Nigrinus  were  accepted  and  a  monarch  would  have 
the  right  of  persecuting  all  those  who  profess  a  reli- 
gion different  from  his  own,  the  " papists"  would  use 
this  argument  for  the  persecution  of  the  Protestants 
in  countries  where  they  have  the  majority. 

While  the  effect  of  the  Reformation  on  the  condition 
of  the  Jews,  appears  only  later,  we  have  to  look  for 
their  beginnings  at  a  time,  coeval  with  the  beginnings 
of  the  movement,  just  as  renewed  measures  of  oppres- 
sion in  Catholic  countries,  and  especially  under  eccle- 
siastic rule,  indicate  the  effect  of  the  principle  of 
strict  ecclesiastic  authority.  The  first  important  event 
which  proves  the  favorable  turn  in  the  situation  of 
the  Jews  is  the  opening  of  Holland  to  their  settle- 
ment. William  the  Silent,  one  of  the  noblest  rulers 
of  all  times,  opened  right  after  the  proclamation  of 
the  independence  of  the  Netherlands  in  1581  the 
country  to  the  Jews  on  the  principle  of  unrestricted 
toleration  of  all  religions.  There  was  no  stage  dis- 
play in  this  measure,  such  as  a  later  Jewish  author, 
Daniel  de  Barrios,  tells  us,  whom  Graetz,  somewhat 
fond  of  romance,  follows.  The  story  of  an  Argonaut 
expedition  of  Maranos  protected  by  a  young  woman 
mascot  of  captivating  beauty,  which,  driven  by  ill 
winds  into  the  harbor  of  Emden,  and  wandering  aim- 

[40] 


lessly  about  in  the  city,  until  they  were  attracted  by 
a  Hebrew  sign  over  the  door  of  a  house,  where  they 
found  a  Jew  who  advised  them  to  go  on  to  Amster- 
dam, offering  his  services  as  their  minister,  is  pure 
fiction.  The  Netherlands  were  a  Spanish  dependency, 
and  it  was  natural  that  they  should  have  in  their 
midst  some  Spanish  Jews,  who,  as  they  were  accus- 
tomed at  home,  continued  to  practice  their  religion 
in  secret,  until  the  proclamation  of  religious  liberty, 
inspired  them  by  and  by  with  the  courage  to  worship 
the  God  of  their  fathers  publicly.  The  same  was 
done  in  Hamburg  and  Bordeaux,  where  the  fugitives 
from  the  horrors  of  the  Inquisition  first  settled  as 
Portuguese  merchants,  the  municipal  authorities 
winking  at  the  fact  that  the  newcomers  were  Jews, 
until  the  population  became  used  to  it,  and  recognized 
them  as  Jews. 

Hamburg  was  another  refuge  opened  to  Jews 
through  the  growing  spirit  of  toleration  which  was 
the  unintended  result  of  the  Reformation.  This  is  of 
no  mean  import,  for  Hamburg  was  strictly  Lutheran 
and  tolerated  in  the  beginning  neither  Calvinists  nor 
Roman  Catholics.  The  German  emperor,  theoretically 
the  overlord  of  the  free  city,  was  wroth  at  this  par- 
tiality which  allowed,  as  he  expresses  himself,  the 
worship  of  the  synagog,  where  the  name  of  Jesus  is 
reviled,  while  the  holy  mass  was  prohibited.  We  find 
such  a  complaint  a  century  later  in  another  Protestant 
country.  The  elector  of  Brandenburg,  himself  a 

[41] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Lutheran,  but  desirous  to  maintain  peace  between 
the  two  leading  Protestant  denominations,  severely 
reprimanded  the  Berlin  pastor  Paul  Gerhardt  for 
his  vehement  attacks  on  the  Calvinists.  Gerhardt,  a 
deeply  devout  soul  and  author  of  inspiring  religious 
poetry,  was  a  narrowminded  Lutheran  and  would  not 
yield,  so  the  elector  dismissed  him  from  his  charge. 
The  congregation  that  loved  its  pastor  protested. 
They  proclaimed  it  an  injustice  that  in  a  city,  where 
the  "blasphemy"  of  the  Jews  was  tolerated,  the. 
"pure  doctrine"  of  Luther  should  not  be  permitted 
to  express  itself  in  the  abuse  of  its  opponents. 

The  readmission  of  the  Jews  to  Berlin  in  1670  has 
a  more  than  local  import.  It  marks  an  epoch  in  the 
modern  history  of  Judaism  and  is  a  milestone  in  the 
progress  of  religious  toleration.  Trade  jealousy  and 
religious  fanaticism  had  combined  to  make  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Jews  in  Vienna  impossible.  The  com- 
plete triumph  of  Catholicism  in  the  lands  of  the 
Austrian  crown  had  in  the  course  of  the  seventeenth 
century  shown  its  consequences  in  growing  hostility  to 
the  Jews.  The  Jesuits  had  succeeded  in  introducing 
the  practice  of  the  papal  states,  inaugurated  by  Sixtus 
IV  in  1584  which  compelled  the  Jews  to  listen  to  the 
sermon  of  a  conversionist  every  Sunday.  A  ghetto 
was  established  on  an  island  of  the  Danube  River, 
making  their  isolation  complete,  and  finally  their 
banishment  from  Vienna  and  from  the  province  of 
Lower  Austria  seemed  to  complete  the  realization  of 

[42] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

the  Spanish  ideal  to  which  the  wife  of  Emperor 
Leopold  I  was  sworn  as  a  Spanish  princess.  The 
exiles  looked  for  a  new  home.  In  their  distress  they 
appealed  to  the  Elector  Frederick  William  who  had 
opened  his  land  to  the  Huguenots,  who  had  shortly 
before  been  exiled  from  France.  This  is  the  new 
feature  of  the  event.  The  Jews  do  not  ask  for  the 
right  to  crouch  in  another  corner,  where  thanks  to 
personal  benevolence  or,  which  was  more  frequently 
the  case,  owing  to  financial  stress  there  was  an  oppor- 
tunity of  finding  a  shelter.  They  ask  for  a  home  in 
a  land  whose  prince  had  recognized  religious  liberty 
by  opening  his  country  to  the  victims  of  religious 
tyranny,  and  they  obtained  this  privilege. 

Still  more  important,  both  for  the  motives  and  for 
the  effects  is  the  opening  of  England  to  the  Jews. 
Desirous  to  avoid  a  romantic  coloring  of  history,  we 
shall  begin  with  the  most  prosaic  point.  The  Stuarts 
plotted  in  Holland  for  their  reinstatement  on  the 
throne  of  their  fathers.  The  community  of  Amster- 
dam, little  older  than  half  a  century,  had  already 
won  a  considerable  financial  standing.  Charles  II 
bargained  frankly  for  the  financial  assistance  of  the 
Portuguese  bankers  who  had  settled  in  Amsterdam, 
promising  them  in  turn  for  the  support  that  they 
were  to  give  him,  the  right  of  settlement  in  England. 
Cromwell  could  not  overlook  the  safety  of  his  own 
government,  and  introduced  a  bill  into  Parliament 
which  abolished  the  edict  of  expulsion,  issued  by 

[43] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Edward  I  in  1290.  The  bill  failed  to  pass,  but  the 
Jews  silently  found  toleration,  afterwards  legalized  by 
the  opinion  rendered  by  the  highest  court  which  de- 
clared the  edict  of  expulsion  as  invalid  on  the  ground 
that  it  never  had  been  passed  by  Parliament.  This 
fact  in  itself  shows  that  it  was  not  mere  utilitarianism 
which  brought  about  the  change  in  a  condition,  main- 
tained for  nearly  four  centuries.  The  civil  wars 
which  ravaged  the  British  Isles,  and  the  war  of  thirty 
years  which  had  devastated  the  European  continent, 
led  the  highest  intellects,  to  the  appreciation  of  free- 
dom of  conscience.  Sir  John  Locke,  born  in  1630, 
was  in  the  most  impressionable  period  of  his  life, 
when  the  peoples  of  Europe  began  to  draw  the  balance 
of  the  terrible  cost  in  lives  and  property,  which  the 
war  for  the  sake  of  religion  had  imposed  upon  them. 
He  embodied  the  results  of  his  thinking  in  his  vari- 
ous epoch-making  works  of  which  from  the  Jewish 
point  of  view  his  "Letters  concerning  Toleration"  is 
the  most  important.  In  it  he  mentions  the  Jews  ex- 
pressly as  entitled  to  legal  equality,  and  he  went  even 
farther.  In  the  constitution  of  the  colony  of  Caro- 
lina which  he  drafted,  the  Jews  are  mentioned  again 
as  being  on  one  level  with  the  professors  of  other 
religions.  The  Magna  Charta,  passed  in  the  same 
year  when  Pope  Innocent  III  decreed  the  yellow  badge 
as  symbol  of  the  position  of  the  Jews  as  pariahs,  was 
a  protest  against  ecclesiastic  tyranny.  Puritanism 
was  its  logical  consequence,  and  it  laid  a  breach  into 

[44] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  ghetto  walls,  although  it  did  not  remove  the  ghetto 
gates.  Puritanism  had,  however,  also  another  emo- 
tional feature  which  guided  its  policy  with  regard 
to  the  Jews.  It  worshipped  the  Old  Testament  whose 
halo  still  surrounded  the  people  to  whom  it  had  been 
revealed.  The  church  which  would  not  allow  any 
hymns  except  the  versified  Psalms  in  its  service,  felt 
a  deep  sense  of  gratitude  to  the  descendants  of  the 
inspired  poet  who  had  sung  the  triumph  arising  from 
suffering  which  in  their  church  hymnal  reads: 

' '  He  that  sowing  precious  seed,  in  going  forth  does 
mourn. 

He  doubtless,  bringing  home  his  sheaves,  rejoicing 
shall  return." 

The  establishment  of  Jewish  communities  in 
Amsterdam,  Hamburg,  London  and  Berlin  is  a  living 
testimony  to  the  growth  of  the  spirit  of  toleration  that 
sprang  from  the  Protestant  insistence,  though  by  no 
means  carried  to  its  logical  consequences,  on  the  free- 
dom of  human  conscience.  Luther's  bold  word, 
spoken  in  the  memorable  session  of  the  Reichstag  of 
Worms:  "Councils  may  err  and  have  erred,"  was  a 
condemnation  of  all  the  misery  which  these  councils 
had  heaped  upon  the  Jews,  the  ghetto,  the  restrictions 
on  earning  an  honest  livelihood,  the  yellow  badge, 
the  suppression  of  rabbinic  literature,  the  enforced 
baptism  of  infants,  the  taxation  of  Jews  for  the  bene- 
fit of  rich  cathedrals  and  monasteries,  and  all  that  un- 
equalled catalog  of  fiendish  sufferings  which  wily 

[45] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

priestcraft  had  evolved  in  order  to  make  its  own 
ambition  appear  as  the  will  of  God.  In  1529  a  com- 
promise was  decreed  by  the  Reichstag  of  Speyer, 
which,  leaving  the  religious  controversy  in  statu  quo, 
practically  recognized  the  breach  of  the  church  as 
past  healing.  In  1540  a  Spanish  noble,  whose  charac- 
ter was  a  peculiar  mixture  of  the  visionary  and  the 
tyrant,  founded  the  Jesuit  order,  which,  determined 
to  establish  absolute  ecclesiastic  authority,  had  to 
treat  the  Jews  as  rebels  against  the  kingdom  of  God, 
and  in  addition,  justifying  the  means  by  the  ends, 
though  this  much  quoted  word  is  not  literally  found 
in  the  works  of  the  Jesuit  theologians,  utilized  the 
age-long  hatred  of  the  Jews,  created  and  nurtured  by 
the  church,  for  its  own  needs.  In  1555  Pope  Paul  IV 
issued  a  bull  which  made  the  ghetto  a  law  for  all 
Christendom,  and  yet  even  at  that  time  a  plain 
Alsatian  village  Jew,  Josel  of  Rosheim,  had  the  cour- 
age to  say  to  the  Reichstag  over  which  the  bigoted 
Emperor  Charles  V  presided:  "The  Almighty  has 
created  us  to  live  by  your  side,  although  we  do  not 
profess  the  same  religion,  and  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
governments  to  provide  for  our  livelihood. "  (Feilchen- 
feld:  Rabbi  Josel  von  Rosheim,  Strasburg,  1898,  p. 
86  et  seq). 

Of  still  greater  importance  is  the  work  of  the  French 
statesman  and  philosopher,  Jean  Bodin  (Heptaplo- 
meres  De  Rerum  Sublimium  Arcanis  Abditis,  ed.  L. 
Nowack,  Schwerin,  1857.  M.  Philippson:  Jean 

[46] 


Bodin.  Eine  Lebensskizze,  Allg.  Zeitung  des  Juden- 
tums.  1866,  pp.  437-440.  J.  Guttmann :  Jean  Bodin  in 
seinen  Beziehungen  zum  Judentum,  Breslau,  1906) 
who  presented  in  the.  form  of  a  dialogue  the  claims  of 
the  various  religions  in  which  Judaism  is  given  the 
best  of  the  arguments.  Some  authors  therefore  claimed 
that  Bodin  was  a  Maranno,  although  there  is  no  proof 
to  be  found  for  it,  except  the  provocation  of  certain 
historians  at  Bodin 's  sympathetic  attitude  to  Juda- 
ism. To  the  same  category  belongs  the  famous 
statesman  John  Reuchlin,  like  Bodin,  a  Catholic  and 
even  strongly  opposed  to  Luther's  work,  which  was 
most  enthusiastically  supported  by  Melanchthon, 
Reuchlin 's  grandnephew.  Reuchlin,  the  first  Chris- 
tian to  write  a  Hebrew  grammar,  was  a  Humanist. 
As  representative  of  the  Renaissance  movement,  he 
advocated  the  study  of  the  Hebrew  Bible,  and  even 
of  rabbinical  literature  on  the  ground  of  the  same 
principle  which  induced  the  Humanists  to  encourage 
the  study  of  the  ancient  classics,  and  to  abandon  the 
fanaticism  of  the  Dominican  friars  who  used  the 
apostate  Pfefferkorn,  an  ignorant  butcher,  to  de- 
nounce the  whole  rabbinic  literature  as  blasphemous. 
While  Reuchlin  deplored  the  breach  in  the  church 
caused  by  Luther,  he  may  be  classed  as  a  reformer 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  opposition  to  the  narrow 
fanaticism  of  the  two  mendicant  orders,  the  Fran- 
ciscans and  the  Dominicans,  who  for  three  centuries 

[47] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

had  vied  with  each  other  in  making  the  life  of  the 
Jews  miserable  in  every  Christian  country  of  Europe. 
Another  pre-Reformation  reformer  was  the  Domin- 
ican friar,  Girolamo  Savonarola,  one  of  the  heralds 
of  the  new  era  which  began  with  the  discovery  of  the 
New  World.  Savonarola  was  not  only  a  Catholic  like 
Reuehlin,  but  a  devout  monk  who  believed  not  only 
in  the  sacrament,  in  the  worship  of  saints,  the  inter- 
cession of  the  Madonna  and  the  remission  of  sins  by 
confession,  but  even  in  the  infallibility  of  the  pope, 
while  at  the  same  time,  he  denounced  Pope  Alexander 
VI  as  the  Antichrist.  Savonarola  called  the  pope  a 
Jew,  while  the  pope's  advocate  and  Savonarola's  life- 
long enemy,  Mariano  da  Gennazzano,  returned  the 
compliment,  calling  his  rival  a  Jew.  Savonarola  was  a 
most  remarkable  character,  and,  like  all  great  men, 
full  of  contradictions.  Possessing  a  clear  grasp  of 
politics  which  astonished  trained  diplomats  who 
visited  the  famous  monk  in  his  cell  at  San  Marco  in 
Florence,  he  was  at  the  same  time  a  mystic,  who 
earnestly  believed  that  his  political  foresight  was  a 
supernatural  gift.  So,  as  already  indicated,  was  his 
religious  view  contradictory.  He  saw  in  the  pope 
the  legitimate  successor  of  St.  Peter  to  whom  Jesus 
had  entrusted  the  keys  that  open  the  heavens,  and  at 
the  same  time,  he  denounced  the  pope  who  then  was 
the  trustee  of  the  keys,  as  the  embodiment  of  evil 
whom  nobody  was  held  to  obey.  Equally  contradic- 
tory was  his  attitude  to  the  Jews.  In  his  chief  work, 

[48] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

"The  Mystery  of  the  Cross,"  he  denounces  them 
as  rebels  against  the  kingdom  of  God  in  the  style  of 
mediaeval  scholasticism.  In  one  individual  instance 
he  uses  milder  forms  of  expression.  The  Republic  of 
Lucca  had  asked  the  famous  monk  for  an  opinion  on 
the  question  whether  it  was  permitted  to  allow  Jews 
to  settle  in  the  city  and  engage  in  the  business  of 
usury.  Such  invitations  were  usually  extended  to 
Jews  in  the  various  cities  of  Italy  by  princes  or  mu- 
nicipal boards.  The  Jews,  often  associated  in  busi- 
ness, obtained  the  privileges  of  a  bank  whose  business 
was  an  aid  to  commerce  and  industry.  The  mendi- 
cant friars,  always  ready  to  utilize  every  opportunity 
of  gaining  influence  in  public  life,  aroused  the  popu- 
lation to  rebellion  against  the  authorities  who  favored 
the  enemies  of  Christ.  The  Franciscan  friar,  Ber- 
nardino da  Feltre,  preached  all  over  northern  Italy 
against  the  Jewish  exploiters  and  agitated  for  the 
establishment  of  cheap  loan  banks,  known  since  that 
time  as  "Monte  di  Pieta."  The  princes,  like  the 
Medici  in  Florence,  did  not  cherish  either  the  form  or 
the  object  of  the  agitation,  and  the  Dominican  friars, 
as  rivals  of  the  Franciscans,  denounced  the  loan  banks 
as  sinful,  inasmuch  as  talking  of  interest  was  sin  iu 
itself.  Savonarola's  view  is  a  compromise.  The 
Jews,  so  he  says  in  his  reply  to  the  aldermen  of  Lucca, 
are  to  be  preserved  as  a  living  testimony  to  the  truth 
of  Christianity.  "Slay  them  not,  lest  my  people  for- 
get," he  quotes  from  Psalms  (Psalm  59,  11).  They 

[49] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

may  be  admitted  not  in  order  to  practice  usury,  but 
if  they  do  it  after  they  are  admitted,  it  may  be  toler- 
ated, just  as  prostitutes  are  tolerated  to  avoid  a  greater 
evil.  Savonarola's  view  is  that  of  scholastic  theology 
and  in  accordance  with  the  principles  laid  down  by 
Pope  Innocent  III  in  the  thirteenth  century,  which 
was  even  maintained  by  the  New  York  Presbytery  in 
its  synod,  held  in  1849  (Occident,  VII,  491)  and  by 
the  "  Churchman, "  the  organ  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  1856.  (ib.  XIV,  31.)  At  the  same  time  he 
urged  the  establishment  of  a  Monte  di  Pieta  in 
Florence  under  the  auspices  of  the  state. 

Savonarola  is  claimed  by  the  Protestant  Church. 
Pope  Pius  IV  condemned  his  doctrines  as  Lutheran, 
Luther  declared  him  as  his  forerunner,  and  his  statue 
is  seen  at  the  foot  of  the  Luther  monument  in  Worms. 
While  historic  analogies  are  never  complete,  we  may 
justly  say  that  the  Dominican  friar  who  died  at  the 
stake  in  Florence  on  May  23,  1498,  as  a  martyr  for 
the  liberty  of  conscience,  and  cruel,  as  his  view  on  the 
Jews  is,  measured  by  our  own  standard  of  religious 
liberty,  he  foreshadows,  nevertheless,  the  awakening 
of  justice  toward  the  victims  of  ecclesiastic  tyranny. 

Martin  Luther  whose  bold  challenge  of  the  right 
of  ecclesiastic  authority  to  control  the  individual  con- 
science, makes  him  the  prophet  of  a  new  era,  is  like 
Savonarola,  full  of  contradictions,  when  viewed  in  the 
light  of  the  modern  conception  of  freedom  of  con- 
science. 

[50] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

His  inconsistency,  manifest  in  approving  of  the 
execution  of  Michael  Servet,  while  he  demanded  toler- 
ation for  his  own  departure  from  the  standard  of 
ecclesiastic  othodoxy,  insisting  on  the  sacramental 
character  of  the  communion  service,  while  he  rejected 
five  of  the  sacraments  of  the  Catholic  Church,  is 
equally  manifest  in  his  attitude  to  the  Jews.  In  his 
earlier  works,  especially  in  his  pamphlet,  entitled: 
' '  Jesus,  born  a  Jew ' '  he  condemns  the  persecutions  of 
the  Jews  by  the  medieval  church,  advocates  kindness 
toward  them  as  means  of  their  conversion  to  Christian- 
ity and  toleration  of  those  who  refuse  to  convert. 
He  goes  even  so  far  as  to  say  that  had  he  been  born  a 
Jew  and  seen  the  idolatry,  practiced  by  the  "Papists" 
in  the  name  of  Christianity,  he  would  sooner  have 
become  a  hog  than  a  Christian.  This  pamphlet  was 
published  in  1523.  Twenty  years  later  Luther 
changed  his  attitude.  In  two  pamphlets  of  which  the 
more  important  bears  the  title  "About  the  Jews  and 
their  Lies"  he  joins  with  his  Catholic  opponent, 
John  Eck,  in  reviling  the  Jews.  Even  the  hope  in 
their  conversion  is  abandoned,  for  the  Jewish  heart  is 
so  "stocksteineisenteufelshart"  that  one  might  sooner 
expect  to  convert  the  devil  himself  than  a  Jew.  The 
only  solution  of  the  Jewish  question  is  to  kill  all 
Jewish  adults,  and  educate  their  children  as  Chris- 
tians. Various  causes  have  contributed  to  this  re- 
markable change.  Various  converts  from  Judaism 
had  filled  Luther  with  bitter  hatred  of  their  former 

[51] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

co-religionists,  by  their  stories  of  the  ridicule  of  his 
work  on  the  part  of  the  Jews,  another  proof  of  the 
great  reformer's  inconsistency  who  allowed  himself  to 
be  influenced  by  apostates  from  Judaism,  while  at  the 
same  time  he  declared  in  his  writings  that  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  a  sincere  convert  to  Christianity  from 
Judaism.  Besides,  the  experiences  of  his  later  life, 
the  continued  strife  in  the  church,  the  disagreement 
in  the  camp  of  the  reformers,  political  and  economic 
radicalism  which  threw  Germany  into  a  state  of  an- 
archy, and  for  which  his  work  was  held  responsible, 
and  finally  physical  ailment  had  embittered  the  soul 
of  the  man  who  like  all  great  men  was  of  an  impetuous 
temperament.  So  he  went  back  on  the  humane  ideals 
which  he  had  expressed  in  1523,  and  in  1537  refused 
to  receive  the  Jewish  advocate  Josel  of  Rosheim  who 
brought  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Luther's  trusted 
friend,  Pastor  Capito  of  Strasburg,  with  the  request 
that  Luther  assist  Josel  in  his  attempt  to  make  the 
Elector  of  Saxony,  Luther's  protector,  repeal  the  edict 
of  expulsion  of  the  Jews  from  his  states. 

The  fundamental  principle  of  the  Reformation  was 
the  examination  of  church  doctrines  by  the  words  of 
the  Bible.  For  this  purpose  the  study  of  the  Hebrew 
language  was  necessary.  Luther  advocated  this 
study  and  introduced  it  in  the  university  of  Witten- 
berg, in  which  he  held  a  chair  as  professor.  His  own 
knowledge  of  Hebrew  was  limited.  It  does  not  seem 
to  have  gone  beyond  the  ability  to  read  an  occasional 

[52] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Hebrew  word,  quoted  in  the  older  Latin  commentaries 
of  the  Old  Testament.  As  the  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
among  Christians  was  exceedingly  rare  in  those  days, 
Luther  had  to  employ  converted  Jews  as  professors 
in  Wittenberg,  but  he  changed  them  constantly,  as 
inefficient  for  one  reason  or  other.  Bernhard  Gepier 
(the  name  seems  to  point  to  Goeppingen,  Wuertem- 
berg)  the  same  man  whose  stories  seem  to  be  re- 
sponsible for  Luther's  animosity,  expressed  in  his 
anti-Jewish  pamphlets,  was  an  ignorant  man  who 
even  after  his  conversion  was  unable  to  sign  his  name 
in  other  than  Hebrew  characters.  He  naturally  could 
not  command  the  respect  of  his  students,  and  soon 
afterwards  changed  his  position  for  that  of  a  night- 
watchman.  Mathaeus  Adrianus,  a  Spanish  Jew  who 
was  a  physician,  and  seems  to  have  been  originally 
converted  to  Catholicism,  teaching  at  the  University 
of  Louvain,  then  as  now  a  center  of  Catholic  scholar- 
ship, became  a  Protestant,  and  taught  Hebrew  at 
Wittenberg.  For  unknown  reasons  he  fell  out  with 
Luther  and  was  discharged.  A  successor  of  his, 
Johann  Boeschenstein,  was  born  a  Christian,  and  one 
of  the  few  who  were  qualified  to  teach  Hebrew.  He 
was  even  less  able  to  agree  with  Luther,  because  he 
wished  to  teach  Hebrew  as  an  academic  study,  while 
Luther  angrily  declared,  he  did  not  mean  to  train  his 
students  to  become  preachers  in  the  synagog,  and 
Boeschenstein  speaks  of  Luther  as  a  fanatic  friar 
(ab  atrato  quodam  circulatore)  (Bauch:  Die  Em- 

[53] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

fuehrung  des  Hebraeischen  in  Wittenberg.  Mo- 
natsschrift  flier  Geschichte  und  Wissenschaft  des 
Judentums,  Vol.  48,  p.  22  et  seq.  1904). 

The  desire  for  the  knowledge  of  Hebrew  among 
Christians  increased  constantly,  partly,  as  was  done  in 
the  case  of  Ruechlin  from  strictly  academic,  humanis- 
tic motives,  and  partly  inspired  by  religious  senti- 
ments. Rabbis  began  to  discuss  the  question,  whether 
it  was  permissible  to  instruct  Christians  in  Hebrew, 
and  Christian  scholars  recommended  this  study  as  part 
of  the  prescribed  curriculum  for  secondary  institu- 
tions. (Elijah  Manahem  Half  an 's  opinion,  written 
in  1544,  Revue  des  Etudes  Juifs,  XXVIII,  Allg. 
Zeitg.  d.  Judentums,  1897,  pp.  463-464.  Solomon 
Luria,  Baba  Kamma,  IV,  9,  who  strongly  condemns 
the  teaching  of  Hebrew  to  Christians.  He  is  approv- 
ingly quoted  by  Isaiah  Horowitz  in  fol.  185a  and  by 
Hayyim  Hezekiah  Medini  X,  133,  Warsaw,  1901. 
Michael  Neander  (a  disciple  of  Luther  and  Melanch- 
thon)  ;  Bendencken  an  einen  guten  Herrn  and  Freund, 
wie  ein  Knabe  zu  Leiten  und  zu  Unterweisen,  etc. 
Eisleben,  1582.  (see  Steinschneider,  Hebr.  Biblio- 
graphic VII,  pp.  69-71.) 

Solomon  Luria  who  wrote  about  1545,  gives  as  one 
reason  for  his  disapproval  of  the  teaching  of  Hebrew 
to  Christians,  his  experience  of  cases  of  apostasy  of 
such  teachers,  and  it  is  quite  probable  that  some  of 
the  numerous  cases  of  conversion  to  Christianity  by 
learned  Jews  that  occurred  about  this  time,  represent 

[54] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

instances  in  which  the  Jewish  teacher  was  influenced 
by  his  Christian  pupil  to  embrace  the  religion  of  the 
New  Testament.  One  of  the  most  remarkable  in-j 
stances  is  that  of  Immanuel  Tremellius,  1510-1580, 
an  Italian,  at  first  a  monk,  who  afterwards  converted 
to  the  Reformed  church,  became  a  close  friend  of 
Calvin,  whose  Catechism  he  translated  into  Hebrew 
as  a  text  book  for  the  conversion  of  the  Jews.  He  also 
translated  the  Old  Testament  from  the  Hebrew  into 
Latin  because  the  Reformers  would  not  use  the  Vul- 
gate, the  official  Latin  church  Bible,  as  biased  in 
the  Catholic  sense,  and  needed  a  Latin  Bible  text  for 
quotations  in  their  scholarly  works  which  were 
written  in  Latin. 

Another  co-worker  of  the  early  Reformers  was  a 
Polish  Jew  who  as  Christian  called  himself  Luke 
Helic.  We  hear  of  him  first  in  1570,  when  he  joined 
the  Moravian  Brethren,  whom  he  assisted  in  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible  into  the  Slavic  language,  the  so- 
called  Bible  of  Kralitz.  In  Eibenschitz,  Moravia, 
he  was  ordained  as  minister  of  the  Brethren  commun- 
ity and  served  as  such  in  the  Moravian  town  of 
Fulnek  in  1581.  He  returned  in  1592  to  Posen,  and 
caused  the  community  constant  trouble.  (Ottuv 
Slovnik  naucny,  dil  XI.  Prague,  1897.)  One  Paul 
Helic  of  Cracow  published  already  in  1540  Luther 'g 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  in  Hebrew  char- 
acters in  Cracow.  (Jahrbuch,  Jued.  Liter.  Gesell- 
schaft,  X.  301.  Frankfort  o.  M.  1913.)  It  was  evi- 

[55] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

dently  done  for  the  sake  of  missionary  work  among 
the  Jews.  It  is  not  known  whether  he  was  a  relative 
of  Luke  Helic. 

Marco  Perez  was  a  Marano  who  had  left  Spain  to 
escape  from  the  Inquisition.  Like  many  others  of  his 
class  he  turned  first  to  the  Netherlands,  where,  al- 
though the  country  was  a  Spanish  possession,  the 
Inquisition  was  less  powerful  in  the  first  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  There  he  became  an  ardent 
follower  of  Calvin's  teachings,  had  the  "Institution," 
Calvin's  main  work,  published  at  his  own  expense  in 
30,000  copies  for  distribution  in  Spain.  When  the 
Inquisition  spread  its  horrors  to  the  Netherlands, 
Perez  emigrated  to  Basel  (1567)  where  he  became  a 
benefactor  of  the  numerous  Huguenot  refugees,  for 
whose  benefit  he  established  a  silk  mill.  There  he 
also  had  the  Spanish  translation  of  the  Bible  printed 
at  his  own  expense.  (Allg.  Zeitg.  d.  Judentums, 
1898,  477).  While  Perez  must  have  been  a  sincere 
enthusiast,  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  the  majority  of 
the  converts  from  Judaism,  won  by  both  parties  in 
Christendom,  were  guided  by  mercenary  motives  and 
tried  to  make  themselves  useful  by  heaping  abuse  on, 
and  often  maliciously  slandering,  their  former  relig- 
ion, and  its  followers.  Paul  Staffelstein  of  Nurem- 
berg published  in  1536  "Ein  kurze  Underrichtung, 
das  man  einfeltig  dem  Herrn  Jesu  Christo  nachwand- 
ern  .  .  .  sol,  und  die  juedischen  .  .  .  Heuchler  und 
Gleisner  nicht  sol  abwenden  lassen."  Paul,  reminis- 

[56] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

cent  of  the  fanatic  Pharisee  Paul,  who  had  turned 
into  an  enthusiastic  believer  in  Christ's  resurrection, 
was  a  name  favored  by  apostates  from  Judaism.  One 
Paul  Pfedersheimer  became  a  Franciscan  friar  about 
the  same  time  when  Staffelsteiner  became  a  Protestant. 
He  instructed  another  brother  of  the  same  order, 
Konrad  Pellican,  in  Hebrew,  and  the  latter  wras  the 
first  Christian  to  write  a  textbook  of  Hebrew  grammar 
in  German.  This  instruction  may  have  contributed 
to  a  change  in  Pellican 's  religious  views.  He  left  the 
order  and  the  church,  and  became  a  follower  of  the 
Swiss  hero  reformer,  Ulrich  Zwingli.  (Bacher:  Zur 
Biographic  Elijah  Levitas.  Monatsschrift  fuer 
Geschichte  und  Wissenschaft  des  Judenthums,  vol. 
37,  pp.  398-404.  1893.) 

We  see  that  Catholicism,  as  well  as  Protestantism, 
had  its  accessions  from  the  ranks  of  the  Jews.  It 
seems  that  there  was  more  to  gain  in  the  Catholic 
Church.  One  of  these  converts  for  revenue  was 
Antonius  Margaritha,  the  son  of  Rabbi  Jacob  Margalit 
of  Ratisbon,  who  slandered  his  former  co-religionists 
in  a  mean  pamphlet,  entitled  "Der  Gantze  Juedische 
Glaube."  The  book  is  so  idiotic  that  it  would  bore 
the  reader,  were  it  not  for  its  vile  tone  which  gives 
evidence  of  the  mercenary  motives  of  its  author. 
Margaritha  did  not  find  satisfaction  in  the  pay  roll 
of  the  Catholic  church  and  tried  to  sell  his  convictions 
to  Luther,  but  with  no  better  success.  It  is  a  great 
pity  that  Jewish  authors  of  that  time  were  so  bitter 

[57] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

against  apostates  that,  as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Solo- 
mon Luria,  they  would  not  mention  their  names,  thus 
depriving  us  of  the  information  so  interesting  from 
an  historical  point  of  view,  what  the  Jews  had  to  say 
about  the  motives  of  men  like  Margaritha,  the  son  of 
a  rabbi,  or  Johannes  Levita  Isaac,  1515-1577,  who 
was  rabbi  in  "Wetzlar  and  became  a  Protestant  in 
mature  manhood.  Teaching  Hebrew  in  Louvain, 
he  turned  to  Catholicism,  and  educated  his  son 
Stephen  who  was  born  as  a  Jew  in  1547,  as  Catholic. 
The  latter  took  orders,  was  professor  in  Cologne,  and 
there  became  a  convert  to  Protestantism,  writing  a 
number  of  polemical  works  against  Catholicism. 
(Wetzer  und  "Welte,  Kirchenlexikon,  article:  Isaac, 
VII,  938.  2.  ed.) 

Individual  instances  of  such  apostasies  we  find  all 
the  time,  for  there  are  always  rogues  willing  to  sell 
their  conscience,  and  dupes  willing  to  buy  it.  Yet 
it  can  hardly  be  denied  that  the  religious  excitement 
produced  by  the  upheaval  within  the  Church,  made 
itself  felt  in  the  ghetto  too.  There  were  at  all  events 
largely  increased  opportunities  for  people  acquiring 
and  changing  religious  convictions.  Protestantism 
had  made  great  headway  through  the  printing  press, 
and  we  saw  in  the  case  of  Marco  Perez  that  its  ad- 
vocates made  great  sacrifices  in  order  to  spread  the 
new  gospel.  The  Roman  Catholic  Church  felt  that 
it  had  to  watch  its  fold  against  the  attacks  by  literary 
wolves,  and  established  strict  censorship  of  all  books. 

[58] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Naturally  Jewish  converts  for  revenue  saw  their 
opportunity.  Following  the  example  of  equally  ig- 
noble predecessors,  dating  back  to  the  thirteenth 
century,  before  the  printing  press  existed,  they  called 
the  attention  of  the  commision  appointed  for  the 
compilation  of  the  Index  of  Prohibited  Books,  as  it 
was  now  called,  to  the  fact  that  Jewish  literature  con- 
tained many  books  which  denied  the  divinity  of 
Jesus,  his  virgin  birth,  his  resurrection  and  his  ascent 
into  heaven.  A  special  index  commission  was  ap- 
pointed, and  one  of  its  members,  who  signs  as  Do- 
menico  Gerosolymitano,  though  he  was  a  native  of 
Egypt,  had  so  suddenly  become  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  that  he  had  no  time  to  acquire 
even  the  Latin  alphabet,  signing  the  imprimatur  of 
the  books  which  he  revised,  in  Hebrew  characters. 
(Steinschneider:  Hebr.  Bibliographic,  V,  76,  97,  125. 
Berliner.  Gesammelte  Schrifteu,  I,  19.) 

While  Judaism,  persecuted  in  a  manner  which  has 
no  parallel  in  the  world's  history,  was  bound  to  lose 
those  weak  characters  who  from  a  material  point  of 
view  had  everything  to  gain  by  their  apostasy,  it  re- 
quired no  small  amount  of  firmness  for  non-Jews  who 
were  in  sympathy  with  the  plain  ideas  of  monotheism, 
to  profess  their  views  openly.  The  first  one  who, 
drawing  the  consequences  of  the  principle  of  Reforma- 
tion, followed  his  own  convictions  regardless  of  ecclesi- 
astic authority,  was  the  Spaniard  Michael  Servet. 
He  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  New  Testament 

[59] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

did  not  teach  Trinity  and  expressed  this  view  openly. 
Feeling  his  life  threatened  in  Catholic  countries, 
he  turned  to  Geneva,  believing  that  Calvin  who  had 
found  there  a  refuge  from  persecution  would  be  will- 
ing to  act  consistently  on  the  same  principle  towards 
those  who  differed  with  him,  but  he  was  sadly  disap- 
pointed. Calvin,  who  decoyed  him  to  Geneva  by  am- 
biguous promises,  had  him  burned  at  the  stake  in  1553. 
Luther  approved  of  this  act  with  equal  inconsistency. 
The  blood  of  martyrs  has  always  proven  the  seed  of  a 
new  religion.  Servet's  sympathizers,  persecuted  in 
free  Switzerland,  turned  to  the  wilds  of  Poland,  and 
found  there  a  foothold  simultaneously  with  the 
Jesuits  who  were  called  there  a  year  after  Servet's 
martyrdom.  While  their  pioneers,  like  Lelio  Socino 
and  his  nephew  Fausto,  were  professed  Christians 
who  merely  denied  the  divinity  of  Jesus,  some  of 
them  went  farther,  declaring  that  the  transfer  of  the 
Sabbath  to  the  first  day  of  the  week  was  a  violation 
of  the  Divine  will,  and  others  going  still  farther  re- 
jected the  fundamental  principle  of  Paulinian  Chris- 
tianity, which  declared  the  Law  abrogated,  and 
professed  Judaism  without  any  limitation. 

These  sectaries  found  accession  among  a  class  of 
Christians  in  the  Slavic  east  of  Europe,  who  since 
1470  under  the  influence  of  a  missionary  named 
Zechariah,  and  supposed  to  have  been  a  Karaite,  had 
more  or  less  accepted  the  doctrines  of  Judaism.  They 
had  found  followers  among  the  high  dignitaries  of 

[60] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  Russian  church,  like  Zosima,  the  metropolitan  of 
Kiew.  Their  number  grew  in  spite  of  wholesale 
executions  and  banishments,  and  their  descendants, 
named  variously  Sobotniki  (Sabbatharians),  Molokani 
(milk  people,  a  term  not  satisfactorily  explained),  and 
Yudeyushtshvi  (Judaizers)  survive  in  large  numbers 
in  Transcaucasia,  where  the  czars  Alexander  I  and 
Nicholas  I  exiled  them,  unable  to  coerce  them  back 
into  the  Greek  Orthodox  Church.  (Johannes  Geh- 
ring:  Die  Sekten  der  Russischen  Kirche,  1003-1897. 
Nach  ihrem  Ursprunge  und  inneren  Zusammenhange 
dargestellt.  Leipsic,  1898.)  Jacob  Emden,  who  is 
very  reliable,  reports  that  in  1763  a  large  number  of 
peasants  from  the  Ukraine  emigrated  to  Turkey  in 
order  to  escape  persecution  and  to  live  as  Jews, 
(Hitabbekut,  p.  19a,  46a,  59b.  Lember,  1877.)  With 
the  growing  power  of  the  Jesuit  order  in  Poland  the 
Unitarians  were  compelled  to  leave  and  found  a  new 
home  in  Transylvania  which,  being  contested  terri- 
tory between  Christians  of  various  denominations  and 
Mohammedans,  offered  them  a  refuge.  Yet  even  there 
they  were  not  free  from  persecution  during  the 
ascendancy  of  Christian  dominion.  Catherine  Wej- 
giel  or  Zalaszewska,  the  widow  of  a  member  of  the 
Cracow  city  council  was  burned  at  the  stake  in  1539 
for  refusing  to  believe  in  Trinity.  (Graetz  Geschichte, 
IX,  454,  3.  ed.  Ha-Eshkol,  VI,  227,  1909.  Allg. 
Zeitg.  d.  Judt.  1909,  p.  576.  Jahrbuch  der  Jued.  Liter. 
Gesellschaft,  VII,  375.  1910.  IX,  499.  1912.  Oesterr. 

[61] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Worhenschrift,  1914,  p.  133.)  In  Transylvania 
various  princes  and  diets  had  since  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth  century  legislated  against  these  heretics.  One 
of  their  number,  John  Toroczkai,  was  stoned  to  death 
in  1638,  thus  being  given  to  understand  that  even 
the  Christian  Law  was  occasionally  a  hard  taskmaster ; 
but  with  all  these  persecutions  the  seed  of  Unitari- 
anism  continued  to  bear  fruit,  and  in  1869  the  rem- 
nants of  their  descendants  in  Transylvania,  at  last 
freed  from  legal  restrictions,  openly  professed  Juda- 
ism, while  in  Transcaucasia  according  to  the  estimate 
of  German  Protestant  missionaries  who  can  hardly  be 
suspected  to  exaggerate,  15,000  peasants  of  Russian 
nationality  are  devout  and  steadfast  Jews.  A  num- 
ber of  them  emigrated  to  Palestine  and  a  small  colony 
lives  in  Los  Angeles,  California.  It  is  also  fairly 
certain  that  the  author  of  a  polemical  work  against 
Christianity,  Isaac  of  Troki,  who  lived  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  was  a  convert  to  Judaism.  Graetz,  (Ge- 
schichte,  IX,  pp.  456-457,  3  ed.)  believes  him  to  have 
been  a  Karaite,  which  is  possible,  but  would  not 
militate  against  the  conjecture  that  he  was  originally 
a  Unitarian.  For  his  Christian  origin  speaks  his 
knowledge  of  the  New  Testament  and  of  Christian 
polemical  literature  and  also  the  name  Isaac  ben 
Abraham,  the  latter  often  assumed  by  proselytes  on 
the  ground  of  the  rabbinic  theology  which  makes 
Abraham  the  prototype  of  all  missionaries.  (Gen 
Rabb,  44.) 

[62] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Considering  the  great  advantages  offered  to  Jews 
who  turned  Christians  and  the  dangers  which  con- 
fronted converts  to  Judaism,  we  have  a  right  to  be 
proud  of  the  facts,  but  it  does  not  seem  that  the 
struggle  between  religions  has  ever  been  settled  by  a 
melodramatic  surrender,  such  as  may  have  been  the 
dream  of  Pope  Benedict  XIII  when  he  arranged  the 
disputation  of  Tortosa  in  1413.  The  Jews  won 
another  more  decisive  victory.  They  persisted  to  live 
in  spite  of  discrimination,  persecution  and  humilia- 
tion, and  the  most  enlightened  rulers  learned  that  the 
prophet  Zechariah  was  right,  when  he  warned  tyrants 
that  Jerusalem  would  be  a  burdensome  stone  and 
those  who  would  try  to  move  it,  would  hurt  them- 
selves, while  those  who  would  injure  Israel  would 
touch  the  apple  of  their  own  eye.  The  exiles  from 
Spain  found  new  homes,  not  only  in  Mohammedan 
Turkey  and  in  the  Protestant  states  of  Holland, 
Hamburg  and  England,  but  even  in  the  territories  of 
some  enlightened  Catholic  princes  right  under  the 
eyes  of  the  pope,  who,  however,  as  was  the  case  with 
Alexander  VI,  in  times  of  financial  stress  overlooked 
previous  conditions  and  allowed  refugees  from  the 
Inquisition,  although  baptized,  to  live  as  Jews  in  their 
own  states.  A  Talmudic  statement  that  it  was  a 
providential  act  of  God  to  divide  the  world  into  so 
many  realms  that  in  case  of  tyranny  in  one,  the  Jews 
could  find  refuge  in  another,  (Pesahim  87b)  proved 
true,  especially  in  Germany  and  Italy.  Emanuel  Phili- 

[63] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

bert,  Duke  of  Savoy,  had  admitted  such  fugitives  in 
1551.  A  papal  nuncio  who  was  anxious  to  win  his 
spurs  in  the  service  of  the  Church,  reported  the  fact. 
The  duke  denied  that  his  Jewish  subjects  had  ever 
been  Christians,  but  he  was  bound  to  expel  them,  al- 
though after  a  while  the  Church  winked  at  this  order, 
and  they  were  tolerated  again.  The  senate  of  the 
duchy  of  Milan,  then  (1597)  under  the  rule  of  the 
fiendish  and  bigoted  Philip  II  of  Spain,  asked  for  an 
opinion  on  the  Jewish  question,  had  the  courage  to 
declare  that  by  the  law  of  nature  the  Jews  are  to  be 
considered  fellow  human  beings  to  whom  humane 
treatment  was  due.  ( Impero  che  participando  essi  con 
li  cristiani  della  ragione  della  natura  e  chiamandosi 
prossimi  non  si  devar  negar  loro  la  ragione  della  com- 
munione  humana.  Vessillo,  Israelitico,  1915,  pp.  337- 
339.) 

Tuscany,  whose  rulers  of  the  house  of  Medici  had 
risen  from  the  counting  room,  was  still  more  appre- 
ciative of  the  economic  importance  of  the  Jews. 
They  opened  their  land  to  them  as  to  Greeks  and 
Mohammedans,  regardless  of  ecclesiastic  laws.  The 
consequence  was  that  the  Jews,  whom  the  bitter  enemy 
of  the  Medicis,  Savonarola,  had  denounced  as  dan- 
gerous on  acount  of  their  usurious  practices,  now 
under  the  rule  of  these  benevolent  autocrats,  who 
opened  to  them  other  avenues  of  livelihood,  became 
merchants  on  a  large  scale,  raising  the  port  of  Leg- 
horn to  first-class  importance  in  the  Levant  trade, 

[64] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

and  developing  the  silk  and  coral  industries  which  to 
this  day  are  giving  to  the  city  its  importance.  The 
removal  of  the  restrictions  on  the  practice  of  Jewish 
physicians,  which,  while  decreed  by  popes  and  council, 
were  disregarded  by  prelates  and  popes  alike  in  their 
own  cases,  gave  to  Jewish  talent  opportunities  in 
professional  life.  Ecclesiastic  tyranny  and  profes- 
sional, usually  mercenary  jealousy,  tried  to  blacken 
the  character  of  Jewish  physicians  (George  Marius 
(originally  Meier)  ;  In  Judaeorum  Medicastrorum 
Calumnia  et  Homicidia  pro  Christianis  Pia  Exhor- 
tatio.  Marburg,  1570.  See  also  article:  Lopez  in 
Jewish  Encyclopaedia),  but  the  public  rendered  here 
as  in  business  relations,  the  final  verdict  which  was 
favorable  to  the  Jews.  The  Jesuits  staged  ritual 
murder  trials  and  host  desecration  dramas  in  Poland, 
and  claiming  that  a  number  of  Jews  had  sneaked  into 
the  order,  and  occupied  a  high  rank  in  it,  passed  under 
the  fifth  general  Claudius  Aquaviva  (1581-1615)  a 
rule  that  men  of  Jewish  ancestry  to  the  fifth  genera- 
tion can  not  enter  the  order.  (Institutum  Societatis 
Jesu.  Decreta  Congr.  V.  52,  Congr.  VI.  28.  Flor- 
ence, 1893,  II,  pp  278-279,  302.  Count  Hoensbroech : 
Vierzehn  Jahre  Jesuit.  Leipsic,  1910,  II.  10.) 

We  have  lived  to  see  the  time  when  right  under  the 
eyes  of  the  Black  Pope,  as  the  Jesuit  general  is  called, 
a  Jew,  Ernest  Nathan,  was  mayor  of  Rome  and 
another  Jew,  Luigi  Luzzatti,  was  directing  the  govern- 
ment of  the  United  Italy  which  was  the  dream  of  the 

[65] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

infidel  Machiavelli  and  of  the  mystic  monk  Savona- 
rola alike.  As  in  Leghorn,  when  the  law  of  intolerance 
was  broken,  so  in  Amsterdam,  Berlin,  London,  New 
York  and  in  all  important  centers  of  commerce  and 
industry,  the  Jews  have  shown  that  their  supposed 
harmful  influence  was  due  not  to  their  innate  charac- 
ter but  to  the  restrictions  imposed  upon  them,  and  that 
it  would  have  paid  Philip  II  of  Spain  to  accept  the 
advice  of  the  senate  of  Milan  and  treat  the  Jews  as 
"Prossimi"  to  whom  "communione  humana"  ought 
not  to  be  denied. 


IV 


When  I  speak  of  "we"  as  authors  of  memoirs,  I 
mean  "we"  the  small  people  who  have  never  com- 
manded in  a  naval  battle,  nor  attempted  to  reach  the 
North  pole,  who  have  not  invented  an  apparatus  for 
wireless  telegraphy,  nor  written  Faust  or  Hamlet, 
who  have  not  distinguished  themselves  as  premiers  of 
a  great  country,  nor  as  assassins  of  a  noted  monarch. 

The  average  people  think  there  is  nothing  interest- 
ing in  such  memoirs.  I  believe,  with  Leibniz,  the 
great  to  be  an  evolution  of  the  small  (les  perceptions 
petites).  Cognitio  est  adaequata,  quum  id  omne,  quod 
notitiam  distinctam  ingreditur,  rursus  distincte  cogni- 
tiim  est.  The  arguments  for  my  statement  are  evi- 
dent. Even  our  interest  in  the  biography  of  great  men 
is  a  proof  of  it.  We  are  interested  in  the  life  of  Wash- 
ington as  a  civil  engineer  or  as  a  landholder,  because 
we  wish  to  understand  the  great  man  not  only  as  a 
strategist  or  as  a  statesman,  but  as  one  who  is  hu- 
man like  ourselves.  A  clear  insight  into  the  condition 
of  the  average  Virginia  farmer  of  the  eighteenth 
century  is  absolutely  necessary  for  us,  if  we  wish  to 


U.  0.  Journal,  Vol.  V,  pages  4-10,  September,  1900. 

[67] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

understand  the  heroic  figure  of  the  leader  towering 
above  his  contemporaries. 

Unfortunately  Jewish  history,  owing  to  the  de- 
ficiency of  our  sources,  lacks  this  personal  element. 
We  possess  the  literary  productions  of  past  ages,  but 
in  many  cases  we  do  not  know  their  authors,  and  in 
no  case  previous  to  the  eighteenth  century  do  we 
possess  that  notitiam  distinctam  which  is  necessary 
for  a  cognitio  adequata. 

We  possess  a  codification  of  Jewish  laws,  called 
Halakot  Gedolot,  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  Simeon 
Kayara,  written  in  741.  The  first  question  is,  whether 
this  gentleman 's  name  is  Kayara,  the  Thora-reader,  or 
Kahira,  which  would  make  him  a  Cairene  (see:  Neu- 
bauer,  Letterbode,  IV,  65).  Another  question  is, 
whether  we  shall  trust  those  authorities  who  call 
Simeon  Kayara  the  author  of  this  book  and  whom  we 
can  follow  back  to  the  tenth  century  (Respp.  Geonim, 
ed.  Harkavy,  Berlin  1885,  p.  191)  or  whether  we 
shall  accept  the  testimony  of  others,  going  back  to 
Rashi  (Berakot  42,  a)  who  make  Jehuday  Gaon  the 
author  of  this  compendium.  A  decision  on  this  ques- 
tion would  not  make  Mr.  Jacob  Biegeleisen,  of  Taylor, 
Wash.,  hats,  gents'  furnishing  goods,  etc.,  feel  any 
more  comfortable.  I  don't  blame  him.  We  would 
have  collars,  cuffs,  neckties  and  nightrobes,  if  Simon 
Kayara  had  never  lived  and  if  Halakot  Gedolot  had 
never  existed.  To  me  it  would  be  of  some  interest 
to  have  light  on  the  question.  I  suspect  that  this 

[68] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

work  was  written  much  against  the  wish  of  the 
Geonim.  It  was  somewhat  handier  and  more  sys- 
tematically arranged  than  the  Talmud.  It  might  in 
some  instances  render  an  appeal  to  the  Geonim  un- 
necessary, and  we  do  not  wish  to  be  dispensable. 
The  Geonim  said,  the  authors  of  "Halakot"  are 
incendiaries,  destroying  the  law.  (Temurah  14b.) 
This  is  quite  natural.  Since  a  handy  volume,  with 
appropriate  headings  makes  the  law  more  accessible 
to  the  less  learned,  the  admiration  for  the  Gaon  would 
decrease.  Our  high-school  professors  do  not  approve 
of  "ponies;"  in  my  time  they  did  not  even  permit 
"  Special  woerterbuecher. "  The  rabbis  of  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nineteenth  century  were  very  much 
opposed  to  the  works  of  Abraham  Danziger,  because 
they  contained  the  material  of  the  laws  on  ritual  in  a 
much  handier  form  than  any  of  the  older  works. 
So  Simeon  Kayara's  biography  would  be  of  some 
interest,  even  if  —  what  is  not  very  likely  —  the  Hala- 
kot Gedolot  had  been  written  verbatim  as  we  possess 
them. 

But  I  have  a  far  stronger  proof  for  the  benefit 
derived  from  the  Perceptions  petites.  A  younger  con- 
temporary of  Simeon  Kayara  and  of  Jehuday  Gaon 
was  a  sort  of  a  peddler  or  travelling  merchant  whom 
I  do  not  even  know  by  name,  but  whose  biography 
would  be  intensely  interesting  to  me  and  perhaps  even 
to  our  friend  Mr.  Jacob  Biegeleisen.  This  unknown 
gentleman  is  spoken  of  in  a  biography  of  Charlemagne 

[69] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

written  by  an  anonymous  monk  of  St.  Gallen,  in 
Switzerland.  The  author  tells  us  that  Charlemagne 
wished  to  play  a  trick  on  a  parsimonious  bishop  and 
for  this  the  Jew  had  to  serve  him.  The  Jew  went  to 
the  bishop,  showed  him  his  goods,  amongst  which  was 
a  mounted  mouse.  This  attracted  the  bishop's 
attention  and  he  asked  what  it  was  for.  The  Jew 
replied  that  he  had  bought  it  in  the  East  for  a  great 
deal  of  money;  it  was  a  charm  of  great  value.  The 
bishop  offered  three  pounds,  but  the  Jew  said:  "I 
would  sooner  throw  it  into  the  sea."  The  bishop 
offered  eight  pounds,  but  the  Jew  said :  ' '  The  God  of 
Abraham  would  not  have  me  lose  time  and  money." 
Thereupon  the  bishop  offered  twenty  pounds,  but 
the  Jew  instead  of  giving  a  reply,  wrapped  his  mouse 
in  costly  silk  and  turned  to  the  door.  Then  the 
bishop  offered  a  peck  of  silver.  The  Jew  hesitated, 
and  with  profuse  protestations  of  his  disinterestedness 
finally  yielded.  He  brought  the  money  to  the 
emperor  who  publicly  rebuked  the  bishop  for  his 
worldliness.  (Freytag:  Bilder  aus  der  deutschen 
Vergangenheit,  vol.  I,  p.  322). 

This  story  is  highly  interesting.  It  shows  that  the 
Jew  in  the  eighth  century  was  a  trader  in  the  highest 
sense  of  the  word,  an  importer,  an  advance  agent  of 
civilization.  This  business  brought  him  in  contact 
with  the  greatest  on  earth.  He  enjoyed  their  con- 
fidence and — what  is  of  greater  moment — he  deserved 
it.  He  was  shrewd  in  business,  he  swore  by  the  God 

[70] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

of  Abraham,  but  he  was  honest.  Of  what  great 
interest  would  it  be  to  us,  had  this  peddler  written 
his  biography,  telling  us  where  his  home  was,  how 
he  had  been  taught,  how  he  came  to  Germany,  where 
he  bought  his  goods,  how  he  was  introduced  to 
Charlemagne's  court,  where  he  ate  and  where  he 
slept  while  on  his  journey  and  so  many  other  things ! 
How  I  would  love  to  read  his  letters  addressed  to  his 
wife  and  to  his  children !  In  his  days,  however,  and 
this  is  my  point,  this  interesting  man  was  a  very 
commonplace  personality,  and  his  letters  were  de- 
void of  all  interest  to  anyone  except  the  nearest  of 
kin  and  even  to  them  they  were  of  merely  passing 
interest. 

Why  should  we  small  people  write  memoirs  ?  Be- 
cause there  may  come  a  time  when  no  one  will  be 
able  to  supply  the  information  which  they  contain. 
Goethe,  the  author  of  Faust,  we  know  through  his 
works,  but  it  is  Goethe,  the  student,  who  was  no 
more  than  a  bright  young  man  in  whom  we  are 
interested.  The  Coliseum,  the  arch  of  Titus,  the 
needle  of  Cleopatra  are  certainly  very  valuable 
relics  of  art,  but  we  need  for  a  full  comprehension  of 
ancient  life  such  relics  as  a  shoemaker's  shop,  the 
notebook  of  a  schoolboy,  the  interior  of  a  tavern, 
a  middle  class  people's  kitchen,  a  plow,  a  stable 
and  briefly  just  those  things  which  in  those  times 
no  one  would  have  described  or  preserved,  because 
everybody  knew  them. 

[71] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Our  rabbis  were  wise  when  they  said:  "Do  not 
say:  'When  I  shall  be  at  leisure,  I  shall  study,  for 
perhaps  thou  shalt  never  be  at  leisure.'  '  It  was 
Goethe,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  who  said  that  a  man 
should  begin  to  write  his  memoirs  at  the  age  of  fifty. 
It  is  a  fact  that  he  who  began  at  the  age  of  sixty 
committed  many  serious  errors  which  can  be  proven 
as  such  from  documents.  Even  fifty  is  late.  I  rec- 
ollect, e.  g.  very  dimly  that  I  was  acquainted  with 
Theodore  Herzl  when  we  both  were  students  in 
Vienna,  1879-1881.  I  also  recollect  that  Herzl  spoke 
to  me  of  Judaism  as  a  matter  of  no  consequence,  but 
in  those  days  no  one  knew  that  there  would  ever  be 
such  a  thing  as  a  Zionistic  movement  and  that  Herzl 
would  be  its  leader.  There  were  then  about  5,000 
or  6,000  students  in  the  university  of  Vienna  and 
most  likely  more  than  1,000  members  in  the 
' '  Akademische  Lesehalle"  and  I  did  not  keep  a 
diary,  but  today  I  am  very  sorry  that  I  did  not 
take  down  verbatim  what  Herzl  said  to  me. 

Just  we  Jews  have  in  this  respect  a  meagre  litera- 
ture. There  is  nothing  of  memoirs  known  to  me  pre- 
vious to  the  sxiteenth  century,  when  the  great 
' '  Shtadlan ' '  Josel  Rosheim  wrote  his  book.  Occasional 
incidents  like  the  arrest  of  Yomtob  Lipman  Heller 
for  blasphemy  have  prompted  people  to  write  down 
their  experiences,  but  the  oldest  memoirs  in  our  sense, 
are  the  naive  descriptions  of  Jewish  life  in  the  seven- 

[72] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

teenth    and    eighteenth    centuries    by    Glueckel    of 
Hameln  and  Jacob  Emden. 

I  have  drifted  into  the  ''why,"  while  I  was  to 
speak  on  the  "when."  It  is  never  too  early  as  we 
saw  in  the  case  of  Goethe  and  as  I  can  prove  from 
numerous  instances.  Imagination  is  always  en- 
croaching upon  our  intellect.  If  I  were  to  read  to  a 
class  the  story  of  Charlemagne  and  the  Jew,  and 
then  ask  them  to  write  it  down,  you  can  depend 
upon  it  that  everyone  will  add  something  of  his  own. 
Besides  the  unconscious  working  of  the  imaginative 
faculty,  there  is  the  frequent  wilful  misrepresenta- 
tion of  facts.  Here  is  an  excellent  illustration.  In 
the  diary  of  empress  Augusta,  grandmother  of  the 
present  emperor,  the  story  is  told  that  the  empress 
regretted  the  growth  of  anti-Semitism  so  much,  be- 
cause it  impeded  the  progress  of  the  Christianization 
of  the  Jews.  In  this  connection,  the  empress  says 
that  Zunz,  at  her  teas  had  expressed  his  regret  at 
having  remained  a  Jew  or,  as  he  put  it,  at  the  great 
whim  of  his  life.  Zunz  died  March  18,  1886;  Em- 
press Augusta,  Jan.  7,  1890 ;  her  diary  was  published 
by  one  of  her  ladies-in-waiting  in  1892 ;  consequently 
all  evidence  would  seem  to  prove  the  reliableness  of 
the  narrative,  but  it  is  all  false.  Zunz  never  was  at 
the  court.  Zunz  was  strongly  opposed  to  apostasy 
and  this  cynical  remark  about  a  whim  comes  from 
Heine  and  has  been  adulterated  by  Karpeles. 
(Allgemeine  Zeitung  des  Judenthums,  1893,  p.  110.) 

[73] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

The  author  of  this  story  mixed  up  Berthold  Auer- 
bach,  to  whom  the  empress  spoke  with  regret  of  the 
growth  of  anti-Semitism,  with  Zunz  and  put  into 
Zunz's  mouth  a  witticism  which  Heine  had  used  in 
regard  to  Zunz  and  which  she  had  read  in  a  changed 
form  in  Karpeles'  book  on  Heine. 

In  1886  a  Spanish  author,  Menendez  Pelayo,  wrote 
an  essay  on  Acosta  published  in  the  Madrid  paper, 
El  Dia,  in  which  he  includes  a  supposed  letter  of 
Daniel  de  Barrios  dated  May  25,  1641,  in  which  de 
Barrios  gives  an  account  of  Uriel  Acosta 's  death 
and  adds  that  R.  Isaac  Jesurun  prophesied  that  Spi- 
noza would  end  similarly.  This  letter  was  reprinted 
in  the  "Vossische  Zeitung"  of  Berlin,  July  18,  1886, 
and  in  a  number  of  other  papers.  The  facts  are, 
that  in  1641,  Spinoza  was  only  eight  years  old  and 
that  de  Barrios  was  not  in  Amsterdam  before  1660. 
In  1641  no  one  considered  Spinoza's  age  a  matter  of 
any  consequence  and  in  1660  no  one  believed  that  it 
ever  would  be  of  any  interest  to  fix  the  date  of  the 
arrival  in  Amsterdam  of  de  Barrios,  who  was  one 
of  the  many  fugitives  from  the  Inquisition. 

Moses  Mendelssohn  died  Jan.  4,  1786,  and  King 
Frederick  the  Great,  Aug.  17,  of  the  same  year. 
Two  years  later,  Mendelssohn's  friend,  the  publisher 
Nicolai,  wrote  a  book  "Anekdoten  ueber  Friedrich 
II,"  Berlin,  1788.  It  would  appear  that  time  and 
persons  should  guarantee  the  genuineness  of  the  re- 
ported facts.  Yet  amongst  them  is  the  following 

[74] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

popular  anecdote.  Marquis  d'Argens  handed  to 
the  king  Mendelssohn's  petition  for  a  charter 
"Schutzbrief"  in  April,  1763,  but  the  petition  was 
pigeonholed.  Mendelssohn  felt  very  much  humili- 
ated and  yielded  only  to  d'Argens'  urgent  demands 
when  he  wrote  another  petition,  July  12,  1763. 
D'Argens  endorsed  this  petition  with  the  words:  "A 
philosopher  who  is  a  bad  Catholic  petitions  a  bad 
Protestant  to  grant  the  desired  charter  to  a  phil- 
osopher who  is  a  bad  Jew.  There  is  too  much  phil- 
osophy in  this  petition  that  common  sense  should 
not  grant  it."  This  story  found  its  way  into  Men- 
delssohn's works,  edited  by  his  grandson,  I,  49,  and 
from  there  into  Kayserling's  biography  of  Moses 
Mendelssohn,  1st  ed.  p.  126  and  God  knows  into  how 
many  almanacs,  but  it  is  not  true.  First  of  all 
Mendelssohn's  charter  dates  from  March  25,  1762, 
and  then  we  possess  a  letter  from  Mendelssohn's 
own  hand  dated  July  7,  1761,  in  which  he  writes  to 
his  fiancee  that  he  has  to  wait  with  his  petition  until 
the  king  shall  have  joined  the  army  and  that  he 
hoped  to  obtain  the  charter  without  cringing  before 
R.  Veitel — Veitel  Heine  Ephraim,  the  influential 
mint-contractor — (L.  Geiger,  Berlin,  1688-1840,  Ber- 
lin, 1893,  vol.  I,  p.  393). 

In  the  cases  quoted,  there  is  some  wilful  invention 
underlying  the  reports,  but  in  most  instances  we 
find  inaccuracies  due  to  the  workings  of  imagination 
and  especially  to  the  shifting  of  persons  and  facts, 

[75] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

due  to  the  association  of  ideas.  According  to  the 
story  told  by  Graetz  (Geschichte,  vol.  V,  3d  ed.  p. 
183)  Charlemagne  called  R.  Kalonymus  from  Lucca 
to  Mayence  in  787  to  establish  there  a  congregation. 
The  fact  that  the  story  is  first  told  in  the  sixteenth 
century;  that  there  are  no  documents  proving  the 
existence  of  Jewish  congregations  in  Germany  previ- 
ous to  the  eleventh  century ;  that  the  appointment  of 
rabbis  by  the  king  is  something  unknown  previous 
to  the  fifteenth  century;  goes  to  prove  that  it  is 
not  true.  But  it  originated  in  the  following  way: 
A  man  by  the  name  of  Kalonymus  had  saved  Em- 
peror Otto  II 's  life  in  Italy,  982.  He  was  perhaps  re- 
warded with  some  grant  in  Germany,  and  a  later 
legend  combined  this  Kalonymus  with  the  more 
popular  emperor  Charlemagne.  (Zeitschrift  fuer 
Geschichte  der  Juden  in  Deutschland  vol.  II,  p.  82, 
et  seq.) 

This  series  could  be  endlessly  prolonged.  I  shall 
give  only  two  more  instances  because  they  are  par- 
ticularly striking.  In  1785  a  Roman  Catholic, 
Joseph  Steblicky,  a  respectable  citizen  in  the  town 
of  Nicolai  in  Upper  Silesia,  converted  to  Judaism. 
He  was  a  man  of  fifty  years,  of  sober  habits,  and  no 
outward  inducement  could  have  tempted  him  to 
take  such  an  unusual  step.  One  should  imagine 
that  such  an  exceptional  occurrence  should  have  in- 
duced people  to  write  it  down  faithfully.  But  these 
are  the  facts.  Steblicky  died  in  1807  and  in  1816  a 

[76] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

man  by  the  name  of  David  Samostz  published  in 
German  a  report  of  Steblicky's  conversion  which 
the  rabbi  of  Nicolai,  Samuel  Zuelz,  had  written  in 
Hebrew,  and  which  must  have  been  written  not  more 
than  thirty  years  after  the  event.  It  is  full  of  ficti- 
tious features.  Steblicky  is  made  burgomaster,  he 
goes  to  Amsterdam  to  be  converted,  the  Christians 
of  the  town  threaten  to  take  his  life,  all  of  which,  as 
the  court-records  prove,  is  not  true.  (L.  Neustadt: 
Josef  Steblicky,  Breslau  1891.) 

In  Dr.  Wise's  biography,  the  following  fact  is  re- 
ported as  having  taken  place  in  1846.  "A  move- 
ment was  then  on  foot  to  erect  a  statue  in  Vienna  to 
Joseph  II.  the  liberal  minded  emperor.  Turning  to 
Auerbach,  Fuerst  asked:  "Dr.  Auerbach,  what 
biblical  verse  would  you  suggest  for  this  statue?" 
Quick  as  a  flash  Auerbach  answered:  "Joseph  recog- 
nized his  brethren,  but  they  did  not  know  him." 
(Gen.  43,  8.)  (Selected  writings  of  Isaac  M.  Wise, 
Cincinnati,  1900,  p.  15.)  This  story  cannot  be  true, 
the  way  it  is  told  here.  The  statue  of  Joseph  II.  was 
erected  in  1807,  and  this  remark  of  Auerbach  is 
found  in  a  story  called  "Josef  und  Benjamin"  in  the 
first  volume  of  his  collection  "Zur  guten  Stunde," 
Berlin,  1872,  vol.  I.  when  he  says :  of  Joseph — not  in 
regard  to  any  monument — it  may  be  said:  "Joseph 
knew  his  brethren  and  they  knew  him  not."  I  do 
not  doubt  that  Dr.  Wise  told  the  story,  but  then,  his 
recollections  were  not  exact,  and  in  order  to  show 

[77] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

how  such  things  originate,  I  shall,  contrary  to  my 
original  intention,  add  three  incidents  of  my  own 
experience. 

While  in  Buffalo  attending  the  rabbinical  conven- 
tion I  formed  the  acquaintance  of  a  very  interesting 
old  gentleman,  Mr.  Kaiser.  As  he  is  like  myself  a 
Moravian,  our  conversation  turned  on  topics  con- 
nected with  the  Jewish  history  of  our  native  prov- 
ince. In  the  course  of  this  conversation,  Mr.  Kaiser 
said  that  he  recollected  how  the  congregations  of 
Prague  and  of  Nikolsburg  quarreled  over  the  privi- 
lege of  burying  the  chief  rabbi,  Marcus  Benedict, 
who  had  died  in  Karlsbad.  Said  I:  "Mr.  Kaiser, 
you  are  mistaken."  Said  he:  "How  can  I  be  mis- 
taken? I  recollect  it  distinctly.  I  was  then  a  boy 
fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age."  I  looked  at  Mr. 
Kaiser,  who  is  a  very  well  preserved  old  man,  with 
some  astonishment  and  said:  "How  old  are  you,  Mr. 
Kaiser?"  "I  am  seventy-four,"  he  replied.  "Well," 
said  I,  "here  you  have  it  that  you  are  mistaken. 
Marcus  Benedict  died  Aug.  12,  1829,  and  you  were 
then  only  three  years  of  age.  Therefore,  you  cannot 
remember  the  fact  distinctly.  Further,  Benedict 
died  in  Karlsbad,  where  Jews  were  then  not  allowed 
to  reside  and,  therefore,  he  was  buried  in  Lichten- 
stadt.  The  question  which  arose  was,  whether  he 
should  be  left  in  Lichtenstadt  or  transferred  to 
Nikolsburg.  The  latter  congregation  wished  its  be- 
loved pastor  to  rest  among  his  flock,  and  the  former 

[78] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

did  not  wish  to  give  him  up,  presumably  because  his 
grave  would  have  been  a  place  of  pilgrimage  for  the 
many  pious  Jews  visiting  Karlsbad.  But  I  tell  you, 
Mr.  Kaiser,  what  you  do  recollect.  You  recollect 
the  death  of  Benedict's  successor,  Nehemias  (Na- 
hum)  Trebitsch,  which  occurred  July  6,  1842,  in 
Prague,  his  native  city,  strangely  enough,  while,  like 
his  predecessor,  he  was  on  his  way  to  Karlsbad.  In 
this  case,  the  congregation  of  Nikolsburg  was  not  so 
eager  to  obtain  the  body  of  the  Zaddik  and  he  found 
his  resting  place  in  Prague."  Here  it  is,  where  Mr. 
Kaiser  got  mixed  up  and  it  is  quite  pardonable.  If 
he  had  kept  a  diary  he  would  not  have  been  mis- 
taken. 

The  next  incident  happened  while  I  was  in  Cleve- 
land, conversing  with  another  "Landsman,"  Dr. 
Wolfenstein,  who  told  me  some  interesting  stories 
from  his  student-life  in  Vienna.  Amongst  them  was 
the  story — I  shall  not  give  the  particulars,  for  they 
would  surely  be  wrong — of  a  critic,  who  in  1861  or 
so  about,  had  written  a  review  of  a  new  play,  from 
what  he  had  seen  at  the  rehearsal.  Next  morning 
the  review  appeared  in  the  Neue  Freie  Presse,  but  un- 
fortunately, owing  to  the  sudden  sickness  of  an  actor, 
the  play  had  not  been  given.  The  story  was  the  talk 
of  the  town  and  the  talented  critic  lost  his  position. 
Said  I:  "Doctor,  you  are  mistaken,  for  the  Neue 
Freie  Presse  was  not  published  until  1864  and 
therefore  it  either  happened  later  or  it  was  a  differ- 

[79] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ent  paper."  Dr.  Wolfenstein  was  positive.  In  1864 
he  was  not  in  Vienna  and  it  was  surely  the  Neue 
Freie  Presse.  Fortunately  he  possessed  a  Konversa- 
tions  Lexicon  and  as  this  showed  that  the  Neue  Freie 
Press  was  actually  not  started  before  1864,  he  had  to 
admit  that  it  was  some  other  paper. 

And  now  the  last!  In  Cleveland  I  found  in  the 
Home  for  the  Aged  a  man  named  Bernhard  Weiden- 
thal,  a  Bohemian,  85  years  old.  He  had  attended 
the  Yeshibah  of  Nikolsburg  and  was  very  glad  to  see 
me,  especially  as  for  some  time  he  had  tried  to  recall 
the  name  of  Reb  Shmul  Reb  Phol'  Koien's  boy — who 
had  died  meantime  as  an  old  man — and  no  one  could 
assist  him.  Now  when  I  told  him  that  I  had  known 
this  boy  as  Reb  Moishe  Loeb,  he  was  the  happiest 
man  on  the  western  hemisphere.  But  now  he  had 
serious  grievances.  "Mr.  Deutsch,"  he  said,  "I  was 
longing  to  see  you.  You  have  once  written  in  the 
Deborah  that  my  teacher,  Reb  Nochem  Trebitsch  of 
blessed  memory,  was  opposed  to  secular  education. 
I  tell  you,  you  are  wrong.  He  even  advised  me  to 
get  a  secular  education."  "Well,"  said  I,  "Mr. 
Weidenthal,  I  have  written  a  number  of  things  in  my 
life,  and  not  only  in  the  Deborah,  which  would 
better  not  have  been  written;  but  in  this  case,  I 
plead  not  guilty.  I  took  it  from  Leopold  Loew's 
works,  (II,  99  f.)  where  this  statement  is  made.  I 
naturally  inferred  that  Loew  who  lived  in  Prossnitz, 
where  Nehemias  Trebitsch  had  been  rabbi,  knew  the 

[80] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

facts."  "No,"  said  Mr.  Weidenthal,  "it  is  not 
true, ' '  and  he  gave  me  a  whole  story  which  was  well 
connected  and  proved  that  the  man's  memory  is  ex- 
cellent. "Mr.  Deutsch,"  he  said,  "you  have  to 
change  that."  "Well,"  said  I,  "Nehemiah  Tre- 
bisch,  as  a  Zaddik,  will  come  to  life  again  in  the  re- 
surrection, but  as  to  the  resurrection  of  the  Deborah 
I  am  not  so  sure."  Returning  home,  I  found  that 
the  Allgemeine  Zeitung  des  Judenthums,  as  early  as 
1838,  (p.  196  and  365),  contains  two  contradictory 
statements.  According  to  one,  Trebitsch  was  op- 
posed to  modern  education,  according  to  the  other 
he  was  orthodox,  but  not  an  opponent  of  secular 
education. 

The  question,  yet  to  be  answered,  is:  "How  to 
write  memoirs."  I  would  state  it  in  general.  "Write 
them  with  consciousness  of  responsibility  to  poster- 
ity, write  the  full  truth  and  if  you  cannot,  or  are 
afraid  of  it,  say  nothing. 


1.81] 


THE   HUMOR  AND   TRAGEDY   OF 
"JEW   TAXES"* 

In  an  editorial  comment  on  the  death  of  Emperor 
Francis  Joseph,  the  Jewish  World  refers  to  the 
ancient  custom  according  to  which  the  congregation 
of  Pressburg  presents  the  Austrian  Emperor,  or  to 
speak  more  correctly,  the  King  of  Hungary,  with 
Michaelmas  geese  on  November  11.  The  London 
paper  gives  as  a  reason  for  this  custom  that  the 
predecessor  of  the  late  Emperor  once  strolled 
through  the  ghetto  of  Pressburg,  and  scenting  the 
odor  of  roast  geese,  entered  a  Jewish  restaurant, 
where  he  tasted  some  of  this  famous  product  of  the 
Jewish  kitchen,  and  being  highly  pleased  with  it,  or- 
dered that  the  congregation  present  him  every  year 
with  this  delicacy.  The  story  is,  of  course,  without 
basis  in  fact,  although  the  legend  has  been  repeated 
with  numerous  variations.  Some  even  go  back  as 
far  as  the  reign  of  King  Mathias,  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  while  others,  more  modest,  ascribe  it  to 
Joseph  II,  who  was  indeed  wont  to  appear  unexpect- 
edly, in  any  part  of  his  empire,  and  is  said  to  have 
entered,  incognito,  a  Jewish  restaurant  in  the  Press- 


''The  American  Israelite,   January   11,   1917. 

[82] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

burg  ghetto.  Again  others,  with  a  touch  of  roman- 
ticism, ascribe  it  to  Francis  II,  the  grandfather  of 
the  late  Emperor,  who  is  said  to  have  fled  after  the 
battle  of  Austerlitz,  in  1805,  and  to  have  arrived 
very  hungry  at  Pressburg,  where  he  entered  a  kosher 
restaurant  to  obtain  a  meal.  Needless  to  say,  all 
these  romantic  stories  are  fiction  without  any  his- 
toric basis. 

No  better  is  Guedemann's  (Geschichte  des  Erzie- 
hungswesens  III,  183)  rationalistic  attempt  to  ex- 
plain this  custom  as  having  originated  from  an 
incident  reported  of  Emperor  Maximilian  (1493- 
1519),  to  whom  the  German  Jews  made  a  coronation 
present  of  golden  eggs.  The  Emperor,  upon  his 
ascent  to  the  throne,  had  been  approached  by  the 
enemies  of  the  Jews,  with  the  request  to  expel  all 
Jews  from  Germany.  When  he  received  this  pres- 
ent he  was  so  highly  pleased,  that  he  said,  it  would 
be  folly  to  kill  the  goose  that  laid  the  golden  eggs. 
The  report  of  such  a  generous  present  is  highly  sus- 
picious. The  truth  is,  that  Maximilian's  father, 
Frederick  III  (1440-1493),  was  a  friend  of  the  Jews, 
and  repeatedly  refused  to  act  upon  the  hostile  de- 
mands made  by  the  Austrian  "states,"  and  that  the 
latter  expected  from  his  successor  a  different  policy, 
but  were  disappointed.  These  golden  eggs  have  a 
counterpart  in  the  story  reported  from  Worms  at 
the  occupation  of  the  city  by  the  French  in  1689, 
that  the  Jews  presented  the  French  general  with 

[83] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

two  geese  that  were  filled  with  louis  d'ors.  A  con- 
temporary, Alderman  Seidenbender,  who  is  author- 
ity for  this  story,  tries  to  prove  from  it  that  the  Jews 
were  the  cause  of  the  fall  of  the  city  (Loewenstein : 
Blaetter  fuer  Juedische  Geschichte  und  Literatur 
III,  66).  Needless  to  say  there  is  not  a  particle  of 
truth  in  the  whole  business. 

Jews  were  the  favorite  object  for  taxation  all 
through  medieval  times  and  down  to  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  when  the  special  Jew  taxes  were 
eventually  abolished.  They  were  first  of  all  subject 
to  excessive  taxation,  for  which  they  had  to  be  re- 
sponsible as  a  body.  Thus  in  the  thirteenth  century 
in  Germany,  the  Jews  paid  one-twelfth  of  the  total 
taxes  of  the  empire,  while  they  could  hardly  have 
formed  one  per  cent  of  the  total  population.  In  ad- 
dition to  these  " legal  taxes"  they  were  bled  on  every 
possible  occasion  when  the  royal  treasury  faced  a 
deficit.  Thus  Emperor  Rudolph,  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  imprisoned  Rabbi  Meir  of  Rothenburg,  in 
order  to  compel  the  Jews  to  pay  additional  taxes, 
which  they  declared  themselves  unable  to  raise. 
Somewhat  earlier  King  John  of  England  imprisoned 
a  Jew  and  ordered  that  every  day  one  of  his  teeth 
be  drawn — it  is  not  reported  that  gas  was  used  in 
the  operation — until  he  would  pay  the  sum  de- 
manded of  him. 

Finally,  the  Jews  had  to  pay  for  anything  in  an 
emergency,  and  to  furnish  any  article  that  was  diffi- 

[84] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

cult  to  obtain.  Thus  a  Jew  in  Brandenburg,  an  der 
Havel,  was  obliged  to  keep  a  stallion  for  the  city  and 
to  furnish  seven  "Wispel"  of  oats  per  annum,  1416. 
( Ackermann :  Geschichte  der  Juden  in  Brandenburg 
p.  23.)  The  Jews  living  under  the  protection  of  the 
commandery  of  the  Teutonic  Knights  in  Franconia 
had  to  furnish  to  every  commander  upon  his  election 
a  "schoenen  und  kostbaren  Leitpferd  samint  Equi- 
page," which  in  1658  was  compromised  by  a  tax  of, 
400  florins.  (Israelitische  Wochenschrift,  Strassburg 
1910,  No.  32.)  The  wife  of  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse, 
on  a  tour  through  her  country,  on  October  22,  1687, 
ordered  that  the  Jews  of  every  district  have  a  fine 
saddle  horse  ready  for  her  on  that  day  (Jahrb.  der 
Jued.  Lit.  Gesellschaft  VI,  p.  112,  F.  a.  M.,  1909).  In 
order  to  keep  the  stable  of  their  sovereign  in  good 
condition,  the  Jews  of  Hesse  were  required  to  buy  all 
old  saddle  horses  of  the  Landgrave,  and  to  have 
good  ones  ready  for  their  places.  In  1745  they  com- 
promised this  duty  by  a  payment  of  500  florins  per 
annum  (ib.  VI,  112;  Monatsschr.  f.  G.  u.  W.  d.  J.  41, 
514).  From  the  same  source  we  learn  that  the 
Jews  of  Hesse  had  to  furnish  hounds  for  the  Land- 
grave, in  lieu  of  which  they  paid  in  1715  the  sum  of 
3,000  florins.  Hounds  were  also  a  favorite  article  of 
taxes  in  kind.  The  Jews  of  Prague  had  to  provide 
them  for  the  princely  house  of  Piccolomini  known  to 
us  from  Schiller's  "Wallenstein"  (All.  Z.  d.  J.  1869, 
p.  244).  The  Jews  of  Mergentheim  had  to  maintain 

[85] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

eleven  hounds  for  their  lord,  and  in  addition  furnish 
relays  for  his  coach  (Jued.  Pr.,  1909,  No.  19).  The 
Jews  of  Hesse  Cassel  had  to  furnish  a  sort  of  feather 
duster  used  in  chasing  game.  This  tax  was  later 
changed  into  an  annual  payment  of  one  florin  in 
gold  per  capita  (M.  f.  G.  u.  W.  d.  J.  41,  514).  An 
order,  issued  in  Prague  (1652)  directed  the  Jews  of 
Prague  to  pay  for  the  maintenance  of  the  king's 
English  hounds.  The  Jews  of  Peine,  Hannover,  a 
very  small  community,  had  to  furnish  six  "Matter" 
of  rye  for  the  maintenance  of  two  greyhounds,  1621 
(ib.  1899,  p.  572).  The  Baron  of  Osterberg,  Bavaria, 
evidently  was  in  straightened  circumstances  when  he 
received  Jews  under  his  protection  in  1802,  for  he 
stipulated  that  every  Jew  or  Jewess  pay  on  their  mar- 
riage 11  florins  as  "glove  money"  for  the  "gnaedige 
Frau"  or  "Fraeulein"  and  furnish  upon  receiving 
his  "Schutzbrief"  a  shirt  and  two  florins  in  money 
(Meidel:  Die  Juden  in  Memmingen,  p.  82).  The 
papal  court  was  especially  liberal  in  devising  taxes 
to  be  levied  on  the  Jews.  The  Jews  of  Avignon, 
which,  until  the  French  Revolution  was  papal  terri- 
tory, had  to  furnish  torches  on  St.  John's  Day  (Re- 
vue des  Etudes  Juives,  53,  pp.  272-276).  Emperor 
Rudolph  II,  a  queer  character,  who  left  the  duties  of 
the  government  in  the  hands  of  Philip  Lang,  a  con- 
verted Jew,  once  received  a  pair  of  lions  as  a  present 
from  some  African  ruler.  As  the  treasurer  reported 
that  there  were  no  funds  for  their  maintenance,  the 

[86] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Emperor  ordered  that  the  Jews  of  Prague  furnish 
twenty-two  pounds  of  fresh  meat  every  day,  1593 
(Bondy:  Zur  Geschichte  der  Juden  in  Boehmen,  II, 
p.  668). 

Any  individual  who  conceived  of  a  pet  scheme,  for 
which  he  had  no  money,  would  petition  the  sov- 
ereign to  furnish  it  to  him  from  a  special  tax  imposed 
upon  the  Jews.  P.  B.  Boetticher,  Mayor  of  Pyritz, 
had  designed  a  map  of  Palestine  with  a  diagram  of 
all  battles  that  were  fought  there.  Not  having  the 
means  to  publish  it,  he  petitioned  in  1765,  Frederick 
the  Great  to  compel  every  Jew  of  his  kingdom  to  buy 
this  map  for  two  thalers,  which  would  yield  to  the 
royal  treasury  approximately  300,000  thalers  and  of 
which  the  inventor  of  the  scheme  demanded  only 
20,000.  The  king  declined  the  offer  (Isr.  Fambl. 
1915,  No.  25).  This  great  ruler,  who  was  very  hos- 
tile to  the  Jews  imposed  upon  them  the  duty  to  buy 
on  any  occasion,  when  they  needed  a  privilege,  as  for 
instance  a  license  to  marry,  300  thalers'  worth  of 
china  from  the  royal  manufactory,  and  to  export  it 
(1769.)  Similarly  the  Jews  were  taxed  elsewhere  for 
the  benefit  of  a  struggling  industry.  Thus  Markgrave 
Karl  Friedrich  of  Baden  gives  to  a  firm  in  Pforzheim, 
the  privilege  that  every  Jew,  received  into  his  pro- 
tection, buy  of  them  200  florins'  worth  of  goods  and 
export  them,  1778  (M.  f.  G.  u.  W.  d.  J.  1908,  p.  79). 
Emperor  Charles  IV,  who  was  always  in  bad  finan- 
cial straits  and  used  to  help  himself  by  pledging  the 

[87] 


Jews  of  various  cities,  which  means  their  taxes,  re- 
served for  himself  the  right  that  the  congregation  of 
Frankfort  should  furnish  him  parchment,  bedding 
and  kitchen  utensils,  when  he  should  reside  in  the 
city  (Kracauer :  Polit.  Gesch.  d.  Juden  in  F.  a.  M.,  p. 
37).  Similarly  the  Jews  of  Nuremberg  had  to  fur- 
nish the  Emperor  with  bedding  and  firewood,  when 
he  was  in  the  city  (Fraenk.  Kurrier,  March  29, 
1908).  King  Charles  of  Naples  (1266-1284)  ordered 
the  Jews  of  Bari  and  Trani  to  furnish  him  with  the 
necessary  furniture  on  his  visit  to  these  cities 
(Guedemann:  Erziehungswesen,  II,  p.  153).  When 
Marguerite  Aldobrandini,  grandniece  of  Pope  Cle- 
ment VIII,  married,  the  Jews  had  to  furnish  a  bro- 
cade canopy,  1600.  (Vessillo,  1914,  p.  387.)  When 
Duke  Alfred  of  Modena  married  (1579),  the  Jews 
had  to  pay  a  special  tax  to  defray  the  cost  of  the  fes- 
tivities (ib.  p.  386).  The  Jews  of  Rome  had  to  main- 
tain 2500  beds  for  the  soldiers  of  the  papal  guards 
(Rev,  d.  E.  J.  LI,  p.  340.)  At  least  somewhat  in  har- 
mony with  Jewish  ideals,  was  a  tax  imposed  upon 
his  Jewish  subjects  by  King  John  II  of  France 
(1350-1365).  They  had  to  pay  for  the  expense  of 
writing  a  French  Bible  with  commentaries  (R.  d.  E. 
J.  LV,  p.  97). 

In  many  places  the  Jews  had  to  pay  special  taxes 
for  fire  protection.  To  avoid  misunderstanding,  it 
must  be  stated  that  this  was  not  done  because  the 
Jews  were  suspected  of  starting  fires  in  order  to  de- 

[88] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

fraud  insurance  companies,  which  did  not  exist,  but 
it  had  a  semblance  of  justice  in  the  fact  that  the  fire 
companies  were  composed  of  volunteers,  and  the 
Jews  were  not  admitted  to  them.  In  Ober  Hesse 
every  Jew  had  to  furnish  a  bucket  for  the  fire  bri- 
gade, 1750.  (Jahrb.  d.  J.  L.  G.  VI,  p.  112).  In  Berlin 
the  Jews  paid  in  the  eighteenth  century  fifteen 
thalers  at  every  fire  that  occurred  in  the  city 
(Geiger:  Gesch.  d.  Juden  in  Berlin,  II,  p.  61,  Freund: 
Emancipation  d.  Juden  in  Preussen  I,  p.  23).  In  May- 
ence,  the  Jews  had  to  keep  fifteen  fire  buckets  in 
readiness,  1661.  (Salfeld:  Vorboten  d.  Emancipa- 
tion, p.  349).  Frederick  William  I  of  Prussia  was  es- 
pecially fond  of  tall  soldiers.  As  militarism  had  not 
yet  developed,  he  had  to  depend  on  the  enlistment  of 
volunteers,  and  for  this  purpose  the  Jews  since  1728, 
had  to  pay  4,800  thalers  per  annum  for  the  enlistment 
of  "Lange  Kerls"  (Freund:  Emancipation  I,  p.  23). 
In  Negroponte,  Greece,  which  in  medieval  times  was 
under  the  rule  of  Venice,  the  Jews  had  to  pay  for 
the  maintenance  of  the  fortification  (1304).  They 
also  had  to  pay  for  the  additional  expense,  incurred  by 
the  city,  when  the  salary  of  the  aldermen  was  in- 
creased in  order  to  compensate  them  for  the  prohibi- 
tion to  engage  in  trade  (Miller:  The  Latins  in  the 
Levant,  p.  209).  Frankfort  o.  M.  was  favored  with  a 
list  of  taxes  which  almost  fills  a  book.  As  a  curious 
instance,  which  has  some  bearing  on  our  main  topic, 
it  may  be  mentioned  that  they  had  to  furnish  the 

[89] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

officials  of  the  building  department,  up  to  1703,  with 
lemons,  which  in  those  days  did  not  have  the  signifi- 
cance that  they  have  now  in  America  (Festschrift, 
Philanthropin  II,  p.  399). 

St.  Michael's  Day  was  a  favorite  time  for  collect- 
ing taxes.  As  early  as  1227,  Viscount  Aimeri  IV,  of 
Narbonne,  imposed  upon  a  Jew  the  duty  to  furnish 
a  certain  amount  of  grain  on  that  day  (R.  d.  E.  J. 
LVIII,  p.  82).  In  Koenigsbach,  Baden,  the  Jews  had 
to  furnish  six  pounds  of  hemp  every  year  to  their  lord 
(Lewin:  Gesch.  d.  Badischen  Juden,  p.  172).  Prob- 
ably hemp  was  a  scarce  commodity  in  those  days. 
In  Hesse,  just  as  is  the  case  now,  fats  had  become 
scarce  in  1718,  and  a  special  tax  of  1,200  florins  per  an- 
num was  imposed  on  the  Jews  to  pay  for  the 
increased  price  of  candles  and  soap.  A  somewhat 
comical  tax  is  reported  from  the  same  country  as 
late  as  1807.  The  Jews  of  Wannfried  had  to  furnish 
to  the  pastor,  to  the  judge,  and  to  the  governor,  each 
a  silver  spoon  every  year  (All.  Ztg.  d.  Judenthums, 
1865,  p.  383).  In  Poland,  a  specialty  of  Jewish  tax- 
ation was  the  duty  to  furnish  wax  for  church 
candles,  and  spices  to  the  officials,  evidently  because 
in  those  days  spices  were  hard  to  obtain.  Thus  the 
Jews  of  Iiiowratzlaw,  now  Hohensalza,  Poseu,  had  to 
furnish  to  the  "Starosta"  six  "stein"  of  wax,  one 
pound  of  pepper,  four  pounds  of  crocus,  and  similar 
quantities  to  the  provost  of  the  cathedral  (Zeitschr.  d. 
Hist.  Ges.  f.  d.  Prov.  Posen  XV,  1,  pp.  43,  49).  The 

[90] 


constitution  of  Cracow,  1595,  provides  for  a  special 
overseer  of  this  spice  tax  (Jahrb.  d.  J.  L.  G.  X.  p.  327). 
In  Carpentras,  France,  which  was  also  under  papal 
rule,  the  Jews  were  accused  of  having  crucified  a 
dummy  made  of  straw.  To  make  atonement  for  this 
supposed  mockery  of  the  Christian  religion  they  had 
to  pay  for  an  iron  crucifix,  and  were  annually  taxed 
for  its  maintenance  until  1793  (Vessillio  1915,  p.  367). 
Such  a  crucifix,  erected  at  the  expense  of  the  Jews 
for  supposed  blasphemy,  is  seen  on  the  historic 
bridge  of  Prague,  and  also  in  some  other  place.  For 
the  fun  of  the  carnival  the  Jews  of  Pisa  had  to  fur- 
nish the  university  students  with  confetti,  until  1783 
(Vessillo  1907,  p.  76).  The  sufferings  of  the  Jews  in 
Rome  during  the  carnival  season,  where  they  were 
made  the  sport  of  the  mob,  and  from  which  they  had 
to  redeem  themselves  by  excessive  taxes,  are  well 
known  to  American  readers^  through  Zangwill's 
"Dreamers  of  the  Ghetto." 

The  law  requiring  Jews  to  furnish  geese  to  their 
rulers,  therefore,  presents  but  one  of  the  many  taxes 
imposed  upon  the  Jews.  It  is  reported  from  Salz- 
burg, under  the  rule  of  Bishop  Pilgrim  (1364-1396), 
(Der.  Isr.  1912,  No.  30),  from  Altenstadt  an  der  Iller, 
Bavaria,  in  1719  (ib.  1898,  p.  101),  from  Horburg, 
Alsace  1723  (Ginsburger,  Les  Juifs  des  Horburg, 
Paris  1904),  from  various  places  in  the  Grand-duchy 
of  Baden,  as  late  as  1814  (Lewin:  Gesch.  d.  Badi- 
schen  Juden,  p.  172),  from  Osterberg,  Bavaria  in  1802 

[91] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

(Meidel:  Juden  in  Memmingen,  p.  82),  from  Schnait- 
tach,  Bavaria  in  1645  (Der.  Isr.  1878,  p.  1229),  from 
Illereichen,  Bavaria,  in  1789  (Meidel,  p.  77),  from 
Mayence,  in  1724,  where  in  addition,  they  had  to 
help  maintain  the  students  of  the  Jesuit  College,  to 
furnish  fish  during  the  Lent  season  to  the  Francis- 
cans, the  Capuchins  and  the  Jesuits,  in  addition  to 
furnishing  bedding  for  the  bishop's  hunting  lodge 
at  Aschaffenburg,  during  the  hunting  season.  This 
sufficiently  explains  the  fact  that  the  origin  of  the 
custom  in  Pressburg  is  but  a  relic  of  such  a  tax, 
which  the  Jewish  community  in  later  times  con- 
sidered as  a  privilege,  and  therefore  maintains  it  to 
this  day. 


[92] 


VI 
THE    MAIMONIDES    PRAYER    MYTH.* 

Editor  Israelite  : 

Sir — Rev.  Madison  C.  Peters  in  one  of  the  editions 
of  his  book,  "Justice  to  the  Jew,"  quotes  a  prayer  for 
physicians  by  Maimonides.  Can  you  tell  me  where 
the  original  can  be  found,  or,  at  least  in  what  au- 
thoritative work  on  history,  literature  or  medicine 
can  it  be  found,  and  oblige? 

Yours  very  truly, 

Wm.  W.  Golden, 

Supt.  Davis  Memorial  Hospital, 
Elkins,  "W.  Va.,  June,  1914. 

REPLY. 

This  so-called  prayer  of  Maimonides  is  an  old  hoax. 
It  was  actually  written  by  Marcus  Herz,  a  prominent 
physician  of  Berlin  (1747-1803),  who  attended  Moses 
Mendelssohn  in  his  last  illness  and,  while  in  his  day 
quite  prominent  as  practitioner  and  lecturer  on  phil- 
osophy, has  won  lasting  fame  through  his  wife, 
Henriette,  a  society  leader  who  survived  him  more 
than  forty  years.  This  prayer  was  translated  into 


*The  American  Israelite,  June  25,   1914. 

[93] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Hebrew  by  Isaac  Euchel,  one  of  Mendelssohn's  col- 
laborators in  the  Bible  translation  (1756-1804).  It 
appeared  for  the  first  time  in  the  Hebrew  periodical 
"Meassef"  (VI,  pp.  242-244)  in  1790,  as  the  work  of 
Herz.  For  reasons  quite  inconceivable  to  me,  Lud- 
wig  Philippson  published  it  in  his  "Weltbewegende 
Fragen"  (II,  pp.  159-160)  Leipsic,  1869,  as  the  prayer 
of  a  Jewish  physician  of  the  twelfth  century.  As  the 
translation  is  so  accurate  that  it  could  not  have  been 
made  from  memory,  my  only  explanation  is  that 
somebody  else  must  have  published  it  before,  mak- 
ing a  false  statement  as  to  its  origin.  I  have  not 
been  able  to  discover  the  source  of  Philippson 's  au- 
thority. From  Philippson 's  popular  book  it  was 
incorporated  into  the  popular  "Magazin  fuer  die 
Literatur  des  Auslands, ' '  published  by  a  Jew,  Joseph 
Lehmann,  and  so  Haeser  embodied  it  in  his  "Ges- 
chichte  der  Medizin,"  I,  p.  837,  Jena,  1875.  Having 
thus  been  recognized  by  a  standard  publication  it 
was  accepted  by  Julius  Pagel,  professor  of  the  his- 
tory of  medicine  at  the  Berlin  University  (1851- 
1912)  also  a  Jew,  in  his  essay  on  Maimonides  as 
physician,  which  forms  part  of  the  memorial  volume, 
"Moses  Ben  Maimon,"  edited  by  the  Gesellschaft  zur 
Foerderung  der  Wissenschaft  des  Judentums,  I,  p. 
244,  Leipsic,  1908.  Following  all  this  its  authencity 
could  no  more  be  doubted  than  the  authenticity  of 
the  gospel  of  St.  John.  The  Israelite  (March  12, 
1908)  gave  it  its  seal  of  approval,  although  I  con- 

[94] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

tested  it  in  the  subsequent  issue,  but  repeatedly 
since  it  has  been  proclaimed  as  being  written  in  dis- 
tinctly Maimonidean  spirit.  Recently  I  wrote  a  let- 
ter to  the  editor  of  "Ost  und  West,"  who  had 
published  it  as  Maimonidean.  He  thanked  me,  but 
preferred  not  to  publish  it.  As  the  very  popular 
"Medizinische  Wochenscrift"  of  Berlin  published 
it  in  1902,  and  any  number  of  medical  journals  re- 
printed it,  no  amount  of  argument  will  rob  Mai- 
monides  of  the  credit  for  having  written  this 
typically  sweet-lemonade  prayer,  characteristic 
of  the  rationalistic  tendencies  of  the  era  of  "Auf- 
klaerung, "  and  I  still  have  hopes  that  one  hundred 
years  hence,  somebody  will  credit  Herodotus  or  at 
least  Rabbi  Jose  Ben  Halafta,  the  genuine  author  of 
Seder  Olam,  with  my  "Foreign  Notes." 


[95] 


VII 
JOURNALESE* 

Men  of  genius  are  best  recognized  by  the  readiness 
with  which  the  public  takes  up  their  winged  words. 
Whatever  we  may  think  of  Roosevelt,  whose  picture, 
to  quote  the  German  poet,  is  swaying  in  history,  ow- 
ing to  partisanship,  his  hat  in  the  ring,  his  muck- 
raker,  his  armaggedon,  and  various  other  expres- 
sions show,  like  the  popularity  of  the  teddybear,  the 
hold  which  the  man  has  on  the  nation.  Bismarck's 
greatness  may  be  gauged  by  similar  experiences. 
One  of  his  famous  sayings  is:  "Newspapers  are 
printer's  ink  to  me,"  and  another  is  that  "journalists 
are  people  who  have  missed  their  calling  in  life." 
Israel  Zangwill,  another  brilliant  man,  is  wonderfully 
happy  in  coining  popular  phrases.  To  him  inter- 
national vocabulary  is  indebted  for  the  invention  of 
the  term  "Yiddish."  It  is  the  best  name  for  a  dia- 
lect which  in  its  previous  form  of  Judeo-German  is 
awkward,  and,  under  the  name  of  jargon,  unjust. 
Zangwill  once  said  with  regard  to  certain  American 
Jewish  literature,  that  is  was  "journalese"  to  him. 
In  this  way  he  expresses  tersely  a  widespread  view 
of  many  people  who  look  upon  journalism  as  sloven- 


*The  American  Israelite,   September  2,    1914. 

[96] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ly  from  the  point  of  view  of  its  literary  form,  and  as 
superficial  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  information 
contained. 

With  all  due  respect  to  Bismarck,  it  is  much  easier 
to  fill  the  position  of  presiding  judge  of  a  court  of 
appeal,  or  even  to  be  the  head  of  a  department  in 
the  foreign  office  than  to  be  an  efficient  editor. 
These  people  have  time  to  consult  works  of  reference, 
and  always  have  the  advice  and  assistance  of  spe- 
cialists at  hand.  Finally,  they  have  time  before 
passing  on  any  question.  It  is  different  with  the 
publicist.  He  must  be  ready  within  a  few  hours, 
and  rarely  has  any  other  help  at  hand  than  that 
which  a  general  encyclopedia  can  furnish.  Jewish 
journalism,  being,  as  a  rule,  confined  to  weekly  pub- 
lications has,  perhaps,  in  the  majority  of  instances, 
more  time  than  the  daily  paper  permits,  but  it  is 
equally  hampered  by  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
ready  information,  and,  further,  labors  under  the 
grave  responsibility  of  the  mischief  which  incorrect 
information  or  tactlessness  may  produce.  The  work 
of  painstaking  scholars  like  Zunz  and  Steinschneider 
certainly  deserves  admiration,  but  they  had  time  to 
do  their  work,  they  could  submit  the  proof  sheets  of 
their  books  to  friends,  and,  if  they  made  mistakes — 
and  they  surely  did  make  some — they  had  the  for- 
giveness of  every  fairminded  reader  who  knows  how 
deeply  he  is  indebted  to  them  for  the  mass  of  cor- 
rect information.  The  journalist  has  a  very  critical 

[97] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

public,  one  with  a  short  memory  and  inclined  to  be 
ungrateful. 

Jewish  journalism  is  very  young.  The  small 
sheets  that  were  published  in  Yiddish  in  Amsterdam 
at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century  are  hardly  to 
be  classed  as  newspapers  in  any  but  the  historic 
sense.  The  haphazard  information  and  the  combina- 
tion of  magazine  and  newspaper  found  in  our  earli- 
est publications  of  the  nineteenth  century,  such  as 
"Sulamith"  or  "Voice  of  Jacob,"  would  in  our 
days  be  ridiculous.  It  is  only  since  the  appearance 
of  "Die  Allgemeine  Zeitung  des  Judentums"  in  1837 
that  real  journalism  began  to  develop.  Even  then 
the  development  was  slow,  as  was  still  more  the 
case  in  the  earliest  years  of  the  "Jewish  Chronicle." 
The  real  news  was  almost  exclusively  taken  from  the 
secular  papers,  and  what  correspondents  furnished 
was  mostly  small  talk.  The  contributors  were  peo- 
ple who  worked  either  for  the  love  of  the  cause  or 
for  self-advertisement.  It  is,  for  instance,  remark- 
able that  the  "Allgemeine  Zeitung  des  Judentums" 
did  not  take  notice  of  the  death  of  Herz  Homberg. 
Here  was  a  man  eighty-two  years  old,  probably  the 
last  survivor  of  the  intimate  circle  of  Moses  Men- 
delssohn, a  man  who  had  been  tutor  in  Mendels- 
sohn's family  and  a  witness  to  the  policy  of 
Emperor  Joseph  II,  and  who  earnestly  strove  to  im- 
prove the  condition  of  the  Jews  by  education.  In 
our  day  every  Jewish  paper  would  devote  columns 

[98] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

to  his  obituary  and  thus  preserve  the  testimony  of 
contemporaries  which  would  have  been  of  invaluable 
help  to  the  historian,  but  is  now  definitely  lost. 

The  reading  public  of  a  newspaper  is  not  supposed 
to  be  interested  in  posterity.  It  may  even  be  said 
that  history  is  a  by-product  of  journalism,  but  with- 
out contemporaries  gathering  the  events  posterity 
will  be  the  loser,  too.  Take  as  an  instance  the  Frank 
case.  What  inestimable  value  is  found  in  the  col- 
lection of  newspaper  comments,  such  as  the  "New 
York  Times"  devoted  to  the  tragedy!  How  easy 
will  it  be  with  a  complete  list  of  the  chronologically 
arranged  series  of  events  to  study  the  case  in  detail ! 

Again,  let  us  make  a  concession  to  the  Philistine 
who  says,  "Why  shall  I  care  for  posterity  since  pos- 
terity never  cared  for  me?"  We,  therefore,  may 
illustrate  the  value  of  newspapers  to  current  activi- 
ties by  two  recent  instances.  Some  anti-Semite  had 
noticed  that  eleven  Jews  were  employed  in  clerical 
work  in  military  offices  in  the  city  of  Constance. 
He  wrote  an  anonymous  letter  to  the  department  of 
war  complaining  that  the  Jews,  with  their  money, 
are  able  to  dodge  the  dangerous  field  service,  prefer- 
ring to  perform  their  military  duty  in  comfortable 
and  safe  offices.  An  investigation  was  ordered,  and 
it  was  found  that  these  eleven  men  were  physically 
unfit  for  duty  in  the  field,  that  the  Jewish  commu- 
nity of  Constance,  numbering  580  souls,  had  110  men 
in  the  field,  of  whom  fourteen  had  been  killed  m 

[99] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

action  and  nine  decorated  with  the  iron  cross.  Fig- 
uring that  more  than  twenty  per  cent  of  the  Jewish 
community  serve  their  country  in  one  capacity  or 
other,  that  more  than  ten  per  cent  of  those  in  the 
field  sacrificed  their  lives,  that  eight  per  cent  were 
decorated  for  bravery,  and  that  it  is  certainly  to  be 
presumed  that  the  conditions  at  Constance  are  not 
different  from  the  average,  it  is  well  established  that 
the  Jew  is  doing  his  patriotic  duty  at  least  as  well  as 
any  other  class  of  the  population.  The  newspaper 
furnished  this  information. 

Another  very  frequent  charge  against  the  Jew  is 
that  he  shuns  physical  labor,  or,  as  one  of  our  Chris- 
tian contemporaries  not  so  long  ago  put  it,  that  he 
prefers  getting  money  to  making  it.  Our  newspa- 
pers last  year,  in  discussing  conditions  in  the  over- 
crowded districts  of  the  Russian  pale,  gave  us  the 
fact  that  2,224  Jews  were  employed  in  the  various 
manufactories  in  the  district  of  Lodz,  a  figure  which 
does  not  include  3,000  girls  working  at  various 
minor  occupations  in  the  factories,.  The  weekly 
wages  ranged  from  five  roubles  for  a  girl's  work  to 
eighteen  roubles  earned  by  a  foreman.  One  must  take 
into  consideration  that  Jewish  labor  meets  with  two 
difficulties.  The  Christian  manufacturer  will  not 
employ  Jewish  help,  and  the  Sabbath  observance  is 
a  serious  obstacle  even  in  the  way  of  the  laborer 
seeking  employment  with  a  Jewish  firm.  There  is 
still  another  difficulty  in  the  fact  that  a  Jewish  em- 

[100] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ployer  who  cannot  employ  Jewish  labor  exclusively 
is  compelled  for  political  reasons  to  discriminate 
against  Jews  if  he  wishes  to  avoid  labor  troubles. 
Another  lesser  but  equally  important  item  the  New 
York  papers  of  June  28  reported.  Two  Jewish 
painters  fell  from  a  scaffold  in  Rivington  street,  one 
being  killed  and  the  other  seriously  injured.  The 
anti-semite,  making  charges  against  the  Jews  as 
parasites,  never  cares  to  quote  facts.  He  takes  his 
task  very  easy  and  speaks  in  terms  to  imply  that  all 
Jews  are  millionaires  who  accummulated  their  for- 
tunes by  stock-broking,  exploitation  of  labor,  of 
crime  and  vice,  by  fraudulent  bankruptcy  and  arson. 
The  publicist  presenting  the  Jewish  side  in  the  argu- 
ment has  the  harder  task  of  meeting  these  general 
accusations  with  actual  facts.  His  task  becomes 
still  more  difficult  because,  while  the  anti-semitic  ap- 
peals to  a  public  that  is  already  convinced  even  be- 
fore reading  the  argument,  the  Jewish  apologist  is 
compelled  to  combat  this  prejudice  in  addition. 

Does  our  Jewish  public  appreciate  the  work  which 
the  journalist  is  doing?  "We  prefer  not  to  give  the 
answer  directly  but  leave  it  to  every  reader  to  ascer- 
tain how  many  of  his  friends  and  neighbors  will  an- 
swer his  question  whether  they  read  a  Jewish  paper 
with  a  sneer,  one  saying  with  a  supercilious  smile,  "I 
don't  read  a  Jewish  paper,"  and  another  insinuating 
that  he  pays  his  subscription  as  a  matter  of  charity, 
saying,  "It  comes  to  the  house  but  I  hardly  have  the 

[101] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

time  to  look  into  it."  Very  often  these  very  same 
people  have  time  to  read  the  trashiest  novel  in  a 
magazine  that  has  no  literary  merit,  either  in  its 
form  of  expression  or  in  its  ideas,  and  surely  they 
have  time  for  other  pleasures.  Very  few  realize  that 
the  support  of  a  Jewish  paper  is  a  service  to  the 
cause  nowise  inferior  to  the  support  given  to  the 
synagogue  and  to  educational  and  charitable  institu- 
tions. At  no  time,  perhaps,  has  this  duty  been  of 
greater  importance  than  at  this  critical  moment  in 
our  history.  Let  us  not  forget  that  the  outside  world 
cares  very  little  for  us.  The  British  House  of  Lords 
will  stage  an  indignation  debate  on  cruelties  per- 
petrated against  the  Armenians,  but  ignores  the 
atrocities  committed  by  Russia  against  her  Jews. 
The  secular  press  is  no  longer  interested.  "We  must 
follow  Hillel's  maxim,  "If  I  do  not  work  for  myself 
who  else  will?" 


[102] 


VIII 
LIBRARY  CHAT.* 

One  of  the  most  charming  things  which  Isaac  M 
Wise  has  written  is  a  series  of  essays  called  "Aus 
Meiner  Buecherei,"  and  published  about  ten  years 
ago  in  Die  Deborah.  There  is  a  peculiar  charm  in  the 
still  converse  held  by  a  student  with  his  books. 
They  are  whispering  to  him  of  the  intimate  events  of 
the  past,  they  are  suggesting  to  him  plans  for  the 
future,  they  are  soothing  him  in  days  of  trouble  and 
quickening  his  energy  when  his  will  power  relaxes. 

Such  a  feeling  has  to  be  lived  through  in  order  to 
be  understood.  Even  intelligent  people  fail  to  grasp 
it.  It  is  nearly  thirty  years  since  one  of  my  older 
classmates  in  Breslau,  Dr.  Emanuel  Fuchs,  died. 
His  parents  and  brothers  had  come  to  the  funeral, 
and  before  they  left,  wanted  to  see  the  Seminar.  As 
a  special  attraction  they  were  shown  in  the  library 
the  alcoves  containing  the  donation  of  Dr.  Bernhard 
Beer,  the  life-long  friend  of  Zacharias  Frankel. 
Their  surprise  at  seeing  this  large  collection  grew 
into  amazement  when  they  were  told  that  these 
books  constituted  only  one-half  of  the  man's  library, 
the  other  half  containing  his  collection  of  secular 


*The  American  Israelite,  Feb.   8,   1906. 

[103] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

works,  having  gone  to  the  University  of  Leipsic. 
"Nu,  is  das  nicht  a  Shetuss?"  one  of  the  party 
exclaimed;  "can  the  man  have  read  all  these 
books?" 

They  were  plain  country  folks,  and  they  thought 
books,  being  an  expensive  luxury,  ought  to  be  read 
from  cover  to  cover  before  being  placed  on  the 
shelves,  just  as  they  would  not  buy  a  new  garment 
before  the  old  one  had  served  its  time  limit.  Even 
intelligent  people  are  of  the  opinion  that  as  long  as 
you  have  enough  books  to  keep  you  busy,  there  is  no 
need  of  collecting  others,  and  therefore  it  might  not 
be  altogether  superfluous  to  talk  of  the  needs  of  a 
Jewish  library. 

We  are  all  to  some  extent  historically  educated. 
Because  of  the  rapid  changes  produced  in  our  mod- 
ern life  by  inventions,  and  because  of  the  growth  of 
large  cities,  buildings,  house  furnishings  and  our 
whole  environment  are  undergoing  a  constant 
change.  This  produces  in  us  a  longing  for  retaining 
symbols  of  the  past.  There  is  not  a  Jewish  home  of 
a  well-to-do  family  in  our  days  which  has  not  in  the 
parlor  a  brass  Sabbath  lamp,  a  Shofar,  an  illuminated 
Megillah  and  the  like.  Of  course,  with  many  it 
is  merely  a  fashion.  Silversteins  have  to  have  it  be- 
cause Goldsteins  have  it.  Still,  this  instinct  of 
mimicry  would  not  suffice  to  explain  that  fact,  if  we 
do  not  appreciate  the  sentiment  underlying  it. 

Collections    in    private    houses    can    not    do    away 

[104] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

with  the  needs  of  museums,  systematically  arranged 
by  experts  as  a  factor  in  public  education.  I  have 
just  recently  received  through  Rabbi  Rubinstein  in 
Baltimore  a  Mohel's  record,  begun  in  1697  and  car- 
ried on  by  his  successors  until  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  prayers  are  written  on 
parchment  and  an  awkward  pen  and  ink  drawing 
of  a  Milah  is  a  highly  interesting  piece  of  naive  art, 
besides  being  instructive  in  showing  the  costumes 
of  Dutch  Jews  in  the  seventeenth  century.  A  scrap 
of  paper,  containing  a  receipt  of  fifteen  Silbergro- 
schen,  which  the  Herr  Vorsteher,  Dr.  Beer,  paid  for 
the  privilege  of  opening  the  ark,  is  another  historical 
curio  in  our  days,  although  not  more  than  fifty  years 
old.  A  donation  by  Mrs.  Louis  S.  Levi  of  an  auto- 
graph of  Berthold  Auerbach  brings  home  to  the 
observer  the  fine  painter  of  country  life  whose  good 
fortune  it  was  to  be  beaten  by  a  much  inferior  man, 
in  his  competition  for  a  Hamburg  pulpit  and  so  to  be 
forced  into  literature. 

From  the  collection  of  Temple  Emanuel  we  pos- 
sess a  Mahzor,  printed  on  vellum  at  Bologna  in  1541. 
Think  of  the  many  reminiscences  connected  with 
such  a  book  that  has  served  worshippers  for  over 
three  centuries.  When  it  was  printed  the  censor- 
ship was  not  established.  About  twenty  years  later 
a  monk  went  over  it,  carefully  erasing  everything 
that  seemed  objectionable  to  Christians,  and  affixing 

[105] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

his  signature  at  the  end  "Revista  da  me  Fra  Giovan- 
ni, 0.  Pr."  To  possess  a  Hebrew  book  without  such 
a  mark  was  a  crime  punishable  with  fine  and  im- 
prisonment. What  a  vivid  object  lesson  this  is  in 
studying  the  recently  again  so  much  lauded  kindness 
of  the  Pope  towards  us,  and  in  understanding  the 
charge  that  Reform  means  apostasy!  The  Domini- 
can friar  who  revised  the  Mahzor  was  a  Meshummad 
and  there  were  hundreds  like  him.  An  important 
erasure  was  made  in  the  "Alenu,"  where  the  origi- 
nal text  reads:  "We  thank  the  Lord  of  the  Universe 
who  has  not  made  our  lot  like  that  of  the  Gentiles, 
for  they  prostrate  themselves  before  what  is  naught 
and  vanity,  and  pray  to  a  God  who  cannot  help,  while 
we  bow  before  the  king  of  Kings,  etc."  The  words 
in  italics  have  been  erased  by  the  censor  and  later 
editions  were  not  allowed  to  print  them.  Two  hun- 
dred years  ago  upon  the  denunciation  of  a  Meshum- 
mad that  the  Jews  still  recited  these  words  and  spat 
out  when  they  mentioned  the  God  "Lo  Yoshia" 
(who  can  not  save),  the  King  of  Prussia  ordered 
policemen  to  the  synagog  to  watch  that  this  should 
not  be  done,  and  in  every  letter  of  protection 
granted  to  a  Jew  it  was  expressly  enjoined  that  "he 
shall  refrain  from  blaspheming  our  most  gracious 
Lord  and  Savior  under  penalty  of  incurring  our  dis- 
grace and  forfeiting  this  letter."  The  sight  of  such 

[106] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

a  book  is  a  vivid  object  lesson  in  Jewish — yea,  in  the 
world 's — history. 

There  are  about  thirty,  perhaps  fifty  thousand 
books  of  Jewish  interest.  Of  every  one  of  these 
books  something  might  be  said  which  is  of  general 
interest.  Say,  e.  g.}  a  year  ago,  I  bought  at  an  auc- 
tion in  Amsterdam  a  little  pamphlet  of  about  twelve 
pages  for  one  dollar.  A  fancy  price,  indeed!  But 
it  is  worth  it  to  me.  It  contains  the  story  of  how 
a  devil  was  driven  out  of  a  young  man  in  Nikols- 
burg,  the  congregation  fasting,  chanting  Psalms 
during  the  exorcism,  the  devil  finally  leaving  his 
abode  from  the  tips  of  the  young  man's  little  fin- 
ger— you  could  observe  the  notch — and  flying 
through  the  window.  This  happened  in  1785.  One 
of  the  Beth  Din  present  was  Mordecai  Benet,  the 
famous  opponent  of  Reform.  He  also  indorsed  the 
book  as  sound  religious  literature.  Some  liberal- 
minded  men  must  have  objected  to  it,  for  a  little 
later  an  imperial  edict  prohibited  the  printing  of 
such  ghost  stories — of  course,  only  Jewish — while 
Catholic  devils  could  be  exorcised  without  any 
hindrance  upon  the  part  of  his  imperial  and  royal 
majesty's  government.  I  came  to  Nikolsburg 
eighty-three  years  later.  You  could  not  have  ob- 
tained a  Minyan  for  such  a  devil  affair,  you  could 
not  have  gotten  my  Talmud  teacher  to  tackle  such  a 
ghost,  although  he  was  a  graduate  (Morenu)  of 

[107] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Mordecai  Benet's  Yeshiba.  Mordecai  Benet's  great- 
grandson,  who  was  a  classmate  of  mine,  would  not 
have  been  able  to  recite  the  Psalms  necessary  for 
expelling  the  devil  without  a  flaw.  All  this  philos- 
ophy of  history  is  taught  by  this  small  pamphlet. 


[108] 


IX 

PLOWDEN  IN  THEOLOGY* 

Probably  all  nations  have  proverbs  ridiculing 
that  selfishness  which  applies  a  different  standard 
to  the  same  act  when  done  by  ourselves  and  when 
done  by  others.  The  Romans  said,  "Quod  licet 
Jovi,  non  licet  bovi."  The  English  say,  "The  case 
is  altered,  quoth  Plowden,"  and  the  Germans,  "Ja 
Bauer  das  ist  etwas  anderes. "  In  no  branch  of  hu- 
man intellect  is  this  selfish  discrimination  more  evi- 
dent than  in  liberal  theology. 

The  orthodox  Protestant  and  the  Roman  Catholic 
need  no  defense.  Pope  Pius  IX,  in  1864  issued  his 
Syllabus  Errorum,  containing  some  seventy  state- 
ments, which  are  declared  damnable  errors,  and  any- 
one who  holds  one  of  them,  anathema  sit.  Luther, 
or  any  good  Puritan  holding  to  the  Westminster 
Confession,  is  equally  positive.  Luther  does  not  like 
scholastic  philosophy.  Belief  cannot  be  demon- 
strated, but  "Wer  glaubt,  wird  selig."  Calvinists 
declare  that  Catholicism  is  paganism,  and  that  its 
devotees  believe  in  a  "baked  god."  Every  one  is  as 
sure  of  his  ground  as  the  drummer  who  sells  a  well 
known  brand  of  champagne.  All  he  has  to  prove  is 


"The  American  Israelite,   Oct.   19,   1916. 

[109] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

that  his  goods  are  entitled  to  their  label,  for  if  they 
are  genuine,  their  superior  quality  needs  no  demon- 
stration. It  is  only  the  fellow  with  a  new  article  to 
sell  who  wants  to  prove  to  his  customer  that  his 
goods  are  home  made,  and  union  made,  and  that  the 
other  fellow  sells  goods  that  are  manufactured  by 
child  labor  sold  at  ruinous  prices.  Our  liberal 
Christian  theologians  also  are  past  masters  in  such 
drummers'  tricks,  especially  when  presenting  Juda- 
ism. The  procedure  is  an  easy  one.  Christianity  is 
so  presented,  that  features  which  the  apologist  does 
not  like,  healing  the  dumb  and  the  paralytic  by  driv- 
ing out  the  evil  spirit,  the  contempt  for  industrial 
activity,  for  thrift  and  the  virtues  of  family  life, 
are  ignored  or  declared  to  be  passing  phases  for  the 
sake  of  accommodation  to  the  local  ideas.  Other 
statements  like  the  fatherhood  of  God  are  exalted 
away  above  their  actual  meaning,  or  even  inter- 
preted in  a  meaning  absolutely  foreign  to  the  orig- 
inal author. 

With  Judaism  the  procedure  is  just  the  opposite. 
When  Jacob  deceives  his  father  to  obtain  his  bless- 
ing, this  folklore  story  is  promoted  to  the  rank  of  a 
fundamental  creed,  to  be  contrasted  with  Jesus'  say- 
ing, "Forgive  them,  for  they  know  not  what  they 
do,"  but  never  with  his  saying  to  the  Canaanitish 
woman  who  implores  his  miraculous  healing  power 
in  a  loathsome  chronic  infirmity:  "It  is  not  meet  to 
take  the  bread  from  the  children  and  give  it  to  the 

[110] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

dogs."  When  the  Torah  says,  "God  visiteth  the  sin 
of  the  fathers  upon  children  and  the  children's  child- 
ren, to  the  third  and  fourth  generation, ' '  a  fact  which 
hospitals,  insane  asylums  and  penitentiaries  prove 
every  day,  then  Jehovah  is  the  god  of  vengeance,  a 
sort  of  giant  Bedouin  who  likes  nothing  better  as  an 
ornament  to  his  house  than  a  pyramid  of  the  skulls 
of  his  enemies :  but  when  the  gospel  records  the  cry 
of  the  Jews,  "His  blood  come  upon  us  and  our  chil- 
dren," as  justification  for  the  unparalleled  suffer- 
ings wliich  Christianity,  praised  as  the  religion  of 
love,  has  meted  out  to  the  supposed  believers  in  a 
religion  of  hatred,  then  the  case  is  altered. 

When  the  Hebrew  Bible  gives  a  law,  "Eye  for 
eye, ' '  which  is  a  crude  form  of  justice  no  worse  than 
that  still  practiced  in  the  days  of  Cromwell,  this  one 
section  of  a  criminal  code  is  promoted  to  the  rank 
of  the  fundamental  principle  of  Jewish  ethics. 
When,  however,  Jesus  predicts  that  people  who  will 
not  believe  certain  irrational  doctrines  (which  our 
liberal  theologians  do  not  believe  any  more  than  did 
Jesus'  Jewish  contemporaries),  then  the  case  is  al- 
tered. But  did  he  not  say:  "By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them?"  Let  us  quote  one  fact  out  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands.  In  many  dioceses  of  Christen- 
dom the  believers  in  the  improved  ethics  of  "Ye 
have  heard  *  *  but  I  say  unto  you, ' '  required  a  Jew 
to  stand  at  the  door  of  the  cathedral  so  that  the 
bishop  after  mass  could  slap  his  face.  In  Toulouse, 

[HI] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

in  the  eleventh  century,  on  such  an  occasion  the 
bishop  hit  so  hard  that  the  eyes  of  the  unfortunate 
Jew  popped  out  and  in  falling  to  the  ground  his 
brains  were  dashed  out.  After  that  time  the  Jews 
compromised  with  the  bishop,  paying  an  annual 
sum  of  money  to  be  freed  from  the  humiliating  cere- 
mony. This  also  helped  them  to  obtain  an  order 
that  the  people,  who  upon  the  signal  given  by  the 
bishop  used  to  storm  the  Jewish  quarter,  butchering 
and  pillaging  the  inhabitants,  were  warned  not  to 
use  any  weapons  except  stones.  They  evidently  had 
used  axes,  scythes  and  swords  before.  I  admit  that 
I  am  not  convinced  of  the  muscular  strength  of  the 
archbishop  who  with  one  slap  of  his  hand  made  a 
man's  eyes  pop  out  and  the  man  fall  bodily  to  the 
ground,  but  is  it  not  just  as  bad  that  the  monk  who 
wrote  the  chronicles  in  which  this  fact  (?)  is  re- 
ported invented  it  out  of  Christian  zeal  ?  Is  not  the 
fact — undisputed  and  indisputable,  continuing  in 
some  parts  of  Europe  to  this  day — that  Christians 
with  the  inspiration  of  the  Easter  service,  exchang- 
ing the  greeting,  "Christ  has  arisen,"  celebrating 
the  crowning  act  of  him  who  said,  "Father,  forgive 
them, ' '  who  taught,  ' '  I  say  unto  you,  do  good  to  them 
that  persecute  you,"  rush  from  church  to  the  street, 
torturing  helpless  old  women  to  death  and  dashing 
infants  out  of  the  windows  to  the  pavement?  This 
ought  to  settle  the  question.  Suppose  (which  we  are 
not  ready  to  grant)  that  the  gospel  contains  the 

[112] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

highest  expression  of  morality,  what  good  did  it  do, 
if  the  organization,  based  on  these  teachings,  taught 
on  its  part  that  it  was  a  meritorious  deed  in  the  sight 
of  the  God,  who  so  loved  the  world  that  he  sent  his 
only  beloved  son,  to  slap  the  face  of  an  absolutely 
innocent  man  in  public,  and  to  kill,  maim  and  rob 
helpless  individuals  who  were  no  more  responsible 
for  Jesus'  crucifixion  (provided  it  ever  took  place) 
than  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  is  responsible  for  the  brutal 
killing  of  that  Jew  in  Toulouse? 

For  he  is  the  venerable  exponent  of  liberal  Chris- 
tianity with  whom  we  have  to  deal.  In  a  discussion 
of  what  prayer  means  to  the  liberal  Christian,  Dr. 
Abbott,  in  The  Outlook  of  September  13,  contrasts 
"two  kinds  of  prayer,"  that  of  Jacob  who  prays  for 
bread  to  eat  and  raiment  to  put  on,  and  that  of 
Paul,  who  encourages  the  brethren  in  Ephesus  with 
the  announcement  of  his  prayer,  "that  ye  may  be 
strengthened  with  power  through  his  spirit  in  the  in- 
ward man."  This  is  sheer  pulpit  cant,  although  one 
does  not  like  to  apply  such  harsh  word  to  such  a 
sympathetic  and  venerable  figure  as  Dr.  Abbott.  Its 
real  meaning  is:  The  Jew  knew  only  a  material 
prayer;  his  God  was  a  boss  who  would  give  him  a 
well-paying  job  if  he  kept  himself  remembered  un- 
til a  vacancy  occurred.  Even  the  "Preacher  King" 
had  only  the  one  life  prayer:  Give  me,  give  me 
houses,  orchards,  silver  and  gold. 

The   Christian   prays   for   "fulness   of   God;"   he 

[113] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

does  not  care  for  pleasure,  like  wicked  old  Solomon 
in  his  well-stocked  harem.  On  the  reverse,  he  takes 
pleasure  in  "infirmities,  in  reproaches,  in  persecu- 
tions, in  distresses,"  and  other  things  that  count 
only  in  heaven.  Of  course  he  also  prays  "Give  us 
our  daily  bread,"  as  did  the  "preacher  king,"  in  a 
distinct  way,  when  he  desired  neither  poverty  nor 
riches,  but  enough  bread  to  sustain  him,  but  this  is 
an  entirely  different  case.  The  Christian,  when  he 
prays  for  things  material,  does  not  mean  it ;  he  means 
fullness,  spirit  inwardness,  and  other  "Schmoos" 
that  you  don't  have  to  understand,  as  long  as  it 
sounds  like  something,  while  the  Jew,  when  he 
prays,  "Search  me,  0  God,  and  know  my  heart,"  to 
which  we  could  add  many  others,  like  "Whom  have 
I  in  heaven  beside  thee,  and  with  thee  I  desire 
nothing  on  earth,"  the  case  is  altered. 

The  grave  injustice,  perhaps  done  unintentionally, 
but  more  likely  with  the  feeling  that  something  must 
be  done  to  prop  the  tottering  structure  of  liberal 
Christianity,  leads  simply  to  this:  to  pass  by  all  in 
Judaism  which  presents  in  clear,  often  more  impres- 
sive language,  that  which  is  supposed  to  be  real 
Christianity;  to  underscore  in  Christianity  that 
which  we  like,  though  we  have  read  it  into  the  text, 
and  to  underscore  a  misinterpreted  conception  of 
Judaism,  to  paint  as  black  as  we  need  it  to  show  to  the 
dullest  eye  the  difference  between  Lucifer's  com- 
plexion and  that  of  the  union  Hallelujah  Chorus. 

[114] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

First  of  all,  ought  we  not  know  them  by  their 
fruits?  Most  of  the  magnates  who  have  created 
the  economic  condition  which  places  our  country  all 
the  time  before  a  crisis  portending  civil  war,  are 
orthodox  Christians.  You  find  them  like  Rockefel- 
ler in  the  Baptist,  like  Gould,  Morgan  and  Belmont 
in  the  Episcopal  church,  which  seems  to  hold  the 
largest  part  of  Paul's  disciples,  believing  that  not 
the  treasures  that  rust  and  moth  will  destroy,  but 
only  distresses  bring  real  happiness.  But  we  find 
them  also  in  the  Methodist  church,  where  they  find 
happiness  in  manufacturing  cardui,  a  schnapps  pur- 
porting to  be  a  patent  medicine;  we  find  them  in 
the  Presbyterian  church,  where  a  man  like  Russell 
Sage,  until  his  ninetieth  year,  went  every  day  to  his 
seat  in  the  stock  exchange,  though  he  never  actually 
had  to  care  for  the  morrow.  You  find  among  them, 
quite  exceptionally,  a  Unitarian  like  H.  H.  Rogers, 
though  as  a  rule  it  is  rather  plebeian  to  be  a  member 
of  a  liberal  church.  The  only  question  is,  if  Chris- 
tianity is  and  can  be  a  real  force  in  shaping  man's 
spiritual  life,  and  if  it  taught  people  "the  power  in 
the  inward  man  with  all  the  fullness  of  God,"  why 
did  the  miners  in  Colorado  have  to  be  shot  down  to 
protect  the  outward  man  in  John  D.  Rockefeller  and 
the  fullness  of  the  safe  in  the  offices  of  the  Standard 
Oil  Company? 

We  might  go  on  indefinitely  enumerating  people 
with  admiration  for  Paul  and  contempt  for  Jacob, 

[115] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

who,  to  use  the  terminology  of  Dr.  Abbott,  pray 
"give  me"  in  stead  of  "make  me."  "Give  me"  is 
the  prayer  of  the  wily  Jewish  Jacob;  "make  me"  is 
the  prayer  of  the  prodigal  son  who  prays,  "Make  me 
one  of  thy  servants."  We  shall  have  to  say  some- 
thing about  that  Midrash  which  Abbott  substitutes 
for  the  altogether  different  meaning  of  the  New 
Testament  text.  We  shall  see,  first,  how  the  rabbis 
in  the  Midrash  interpret  Jacob's  trick  in  obtaining 
the  birthright.  They  say  Jacob  knew  through  his 
prophetic  gift  that  the  first  born  were  destined  to  be 
called  into  the  service  of  God,  and  therefore  he  craved 
for  it,  obtaining  it  easily  from  Esau,  who  frankly 
confesses  he  does  not  care  for  it.  You  see  how  you 
can  read  idealism  into  anything.  Much  better  is 
another  Midrash  on  Jacob's  attitude.  Scripture 
tells  us  that  he  was  left  alone  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Yabbok,  when  he  fought  with  the  angel.  The  rabbis 
asked  the  correct  question  "How  could  Jacob  re- 
main alone  when  he  successively  forded  the  river 
with  the  members  of  his  family?"  The  answer  is :  he 
returned  to  fetch  some  household  goods,  acting  like 
the  righteous  who  will  risk  their  lives  for  the  sake 
of  their  property  because  they  are  afraid  of  tempta- 
tion to  become  dishonest  through  need.  Is  not  this 
Midrash  a  more  natural  interpretation  of  Jacob's 
prayer?  He  prays  for  bread  to  eat  and  raiment  to 
put  on,  not  for  wealth  and  power,  but,  like  Solomon, 
for  the  bread  he  needs.  He  adds  the  prayer  that 

[116] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

God  bring  him  back  in  peace  to  his  father's  house. 
He  does  not  go  out  with  the  spirit  of  the  Spanish 
conquistadores,  who  while  driven  by  the  thirst  of 
gold,  claimed  they  wanted  to  subject  the  whole 
world  to  the  Holy  Virgin.  Jacob  longs  for  the  home 
of  his  fathers,  though  one  of  the  charges  against  his 
descendants  is  that  they  are  nomads,  lacking  the 
home  sentiment,  "Bodenstaendigkeit."  Then  he 
promises,  of  the  modest  fortune  which  he  expects 
from  God  to  whom  he  prays,  one-tenth  to  good  pur- 
poses. Ten  per  cent  of  the  gross  income  of  all  the 
believers  in  the  inspiration  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Ephesians  would  go  a  long  way  to  settle  our  labor 
troubles.  And  with  all  that,  we  have  read  nothing 
into  the  prayer  of  Jacob  which  is  not  actually  found 
in  it. 

Let  us  read  the  New  Testament  story  of  the  son 
who  squandered  his  father's  heritage,  and  in  order 
to  save  himself  from  starvation  would  work  on  his 
father's  farm  as  a  hired  man.  The  outward  mean- 
ing is  clear.  Conditions  at  home  were  too  narrow 
for  the  ambitious  young  man;  he  was  seized  with 
something  like  the  wild  west  fever,  lost  all  he  had, 
and  when  he  was  completely  broke  he  thought  of  his 
father  again ;  feeling  that  the  servants  in  his  father's 
house  were  better  off  than  he. 

True,  it  is  a  parable.  The  younger  son  is  the 
heathen  world  that  will  come  to  the  father  they  had 
forsaken.  But  surely  the  insignificant  phrase, 

[117] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

"make  me  as  one  of  thy  hired  servants,"  is  not  the 
pivotal  point,  contrasting  the  moral  lesson  with 
Jacob's  "give  me."  Nor  had  the  Preacher  King 
prayed,  as  Abbott  put  it,  for  knowledge,  pleasures, 
houses,  servants.  Praying  is  not  his  habit  at  all. 
He  merely  tried  the  various  roads  to  happiness — 
learning,  wealth,  power — and  being  disgusted  with 
all,  cried  "All  is  vanity."  Only  for  the  sake  of 
propping  up  liberal  Christianity,  Jacob's  and  Solo- 
mon's, cases  are  altered,  quoth  Plowden. 


[118] 


X 

HIGHER    AND    LOWER    ANTI-SEMITISM.* 

The  late  Dr.  Schechter  coined  the  very  clever 
phrase  "higher  anti-semitism. "  It  is  patterned 
after  the  commonly  accepted  term  "higher  criti- 
cism." The  latter  meant  the  attempt  to  determine 
the  origin  of  a  certain  book  of  the  Bible  or  of  a  cer- 
tain doctrine  by  internal  evidence,  and  is  distin- 
guished from  lower  criticism  which  concerns  itself 
with  textual  questions  alone.  Higher  anti-semitism 
is  the  more  or  less  conscious  anti-semitism  of 
scholars,  who,  while  they  would  shrink  in  horror 
from  the  atrocities  of  a  pogrom,  are  guided  in  their 
scientific  studies  by  an  unreasoning  antipathy  to 
everything  Jewish. 

Julius  Wellhausen,  whose  name  is  typical  for  ad- 
vanced criticism,  or  Friedrich  Delitzsch,  to  whom 
the  whole  of  the  Old  Testament  is  an  Assyrian  re- 
ligion, are  good  specimens  of  this  type.  Their 
method  is  simple.  Everything  Jewish  is  interpreted 
in  the  narrowest  sense  the  text  will  bear,  and  every- 
thing Christian  is  presented  in  the  broadest  interpre- 
tation which  an  apologetic  conception  of  the  text 
will  permit.  One  of  the  most  popular  terms  that 


'The  American  Israelite,   January  26,    1916. 

[119] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

owe  their  origin  to  this  sentiment  is  "henotheism" 
as  contradistinguished  from  monotheism.  For  cen- 
turies the  Jews  were  considered  the  pioneers  of  the 
latter  doctrine,  which  declares  the  belief  in  one  God 
as  the  basis  of  all  ethical  and  religious  conception. 
This  world  is  a  unit,  created  and  governed  by  one 
spiritual  force,  and  therefore  all  humanity  is  one. 
Any  Sabbath  School  child  knows  that  the  "Sh'ma 
Yisrael"  has  been  inserted  in  the  ritual  for  all  occa- 
sions as  the  expression  of  this  fundamental  truth, 
and  as  the  guiding  force  of  truly  Jewish  concept. 
Probably  the  majority  of  Jews  who  have  received 
a  fair  religious  training  are  familiar  with  the  Tal- 
mudic  statement  that  God  created  only  one  man  in 
the  beginning,  so  that  no  one  should  have  the  right 
to  say:  "I  am  of  a  higher  descent  than  you!" 
Liberal  Christian  theologians  of  our  day  claim  that 
Judaism  did  not  teach  this  idea,  but  spoke  only  of 
one  God  as  the  God  of  Israel,  who  loves  his  people, 
but  hates  all  other  nations  in  the  manner  of  a  whim- 
sical despot.  This  doctrine  is  called  "henotheism. " 
It  is  true  there  are  passages  in  the  Bible  and  in  Rab- 
binic literature  which  corroborate  or  seem  to  cor- 
roborate such  an  idea,  and  by  emphasizing  such  pas- 
sages and  by  ignoring  all  others,  it  is  easy  to  make 
such  defamatory  statements  with  a  semblance  and 
pretense  of  scientific  correctness.  The  exactly  op- 
posite is  done  in  the  case  of  Christianity.  Every- 
thing unfavorable  is  interpreted  away,  or  entirely 

[120] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ignored,  or  declared  a  later  interpolation.  Every- 
thing favorable,  though  it  may  have  its  exact  paral- 
lels in  the  Old  Testament  or  in  Rabbinic  literature,  is 
typically  Christian. 

When  Jeptha,  who  is  represented  in  the  Bible  as 
a  chief  of  brigands,  says,  "That  which  Chemosh, 
Thy  God,  giveth  thee  to  possess,  thou  shalt  possess, 
and  whomsoever  the  Lord  our  God,  has  dispossesed 
from  before  us  them  we  will  possess"  (Judges  11, 
24),  he  lays  down  a  fundamental  doctrine  of  Israel 
for  all  time.  When,  however,  Moses,  the  teacher  of 
Israel,  than  whom  there  never  was  any  greater  nor 
ever  will  be  according  to  Jewish  dogma,  said, 
"Know  therefore  this  day  and  lay  it  to  thine  heart 
that  the  Lord  he  is  God  in  Heaven  above  and  upon  the 
Earth  beneath.  There  is  none  else"  (Deut.  4,  39), 
and  when  this  passage  is  found  in  the  daily  prayers 
of  the  Jews,  our  higher  critics  for  all  of  their  liberal- 
ism ignore  this  fact  altogether. 

When  Jesus  is  quoted  as  saying,  "Blessed  are  the 
peacemakers  for  they  shall  be  called  'Sons  of  God'  ' 
(Mat.  5,  9),  this  is  the  undisputed  and  original 
teaching  of  Christianity.  When,  however,  the  same 
author  quotes  Jesus  as  saying,  "Think  not  that  I 
came  to  make  peace  on  the  Earth.  I  came  not  to 
send  peace  but  a  sword,"  (ib.  10,  34),  this  is  entirely 
ignored  or  declared  to  be  a  later  invention  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Jesus  by  some  fanatic.  When  in  the 
Talmud  Rabbi  Simeon  ben  Yohai,  who  lived  at  the 

[121] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

time  of  the  Bar  Kochba  rebellion  said,  "The  best  of 
the  Goyim  kill  and  the  best  snake  crush  its  head" 
(Mekiltha  Par.  IV.),  this  is  irrefutable  proof  that 
the  Jews  are  vindictive  and  that  they  know  of  no 
ethical  law  which  binds  them  to  other  nations  by  the 
principles  of  humanity.  Nobody  remembers  then 
that  an  American  general  once  said  that  the  only 
good  Indian  is  a  dead  Indian;  that  the  Inquisition 
put  to  death  in  Spain  alone,  according  to  Llorente's 
computation  300,000  people  and  that  even  if  Llorente 
exaggerated,  we  know  it  to  be  a  fact  that  in  the  little 
town  of  Guadeloupe,  which  numbered  about  3,000 
people,  53  persons  were  burned  at  the  stake  in  a 
single  year,  (1485).  We  know  also  that  in  the  city 
of  Seville  during  forty  years  40,000  people  were 
burned  at  the  stake.  We  know  also  that  Pope  Six- 
tus  IV,  congratulated  Thomas  Torquemada,  the 
butcher  who  is  responsible  for  the  expulsion  of  the 
Jews  from  Spain,  on  his  ' '  great  achievements  for  the 
glory  of  the  church."  We  further  know  that  on 
June  29,  1867,  Peter  Arbues,  "the  bitter  persecutor 
of  heresies"  as  his  admirers  called  him,  was  declared 
a  saint.  For  all  these  occurrences  Christianity  is 
supposed  not  to  be  responsible,  but  we  Jews  of  today 
and  Judaism  of  all  generations,  are  charged  with 
responsibility  for  a  word  spoken  by  Simeon  ben 
Yohai,  a  man  who  lived  at  a  time  when  his  people 
fought  against  that  system  of  tyrannical  oppression 
and  exploitation,  which  characterized  the  Roman 

[122] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

provincial  administration.  Is  it  really  so  bad  that  a 
man  in  his  bitter  feeling,  provoked  at  the  sham  of 
Roman  Kultur,  said  that  the  best  of  the  Goyim — 
speaking  of  the  Romans  of  his  time — are  no  more  to 
be  trusted  than  a  snake  ? 

We  have  no  quarrel  with  the  narrow-minded  fana- 
tic. To  him  Christianity  is  the  only  means  of  salva- 
tion, and  by  Christianity  he  understands  the  dog- 
matic system  in  which  he  believes  and  therefore,  "if 
any  man  loveth  not  the  Lord,  let  him  be  anathema" 
(I  Cor.  16,  22)  and  the  Jews  "shall  be  cast  forth 
into  the  outer  darkness.  There  shall  be  the  weeping 
and  gnashing  of  teeth."  (Mat.  8,  13).  It  is  grievous, 
however,  to  find  that  a  man  of  broad  views  like  the 
venerable  Washington  Gladden,  in  an  article  en- 
titled, "What  ails  the  Church?"  published  in  The 
Congregationalist  and  Christian  World  of  Janu- 
ary 13  should  say,  "By  the  precepts  of  henotheism, 
the  massacre  of  the  Caananites  was  lauded.  Under 
the  precepts  of  Christ  it  is  horrible."  We  find  that 
"under  the  precepts  of  henotheism,  the  prophet 
said,  "Have  we  not  all  one  father,  has  not  one  God 
created  us  ?  Why  shall  we  deal  treacherously,  every 
man  against  his  brother?  (Malachai,  2,  10).  We 
find  that  under  the  same  precepts  of  henotheism,  a 
man  said:  "I  will  gather  all  nations  and  tongues, 
and  they  shall  come  and  see  my  glory,  and  they  shall 
bring  all  your  brethren  from  all  the  nations  for  an 
offering  unto  the  Lord;  and  all  flesh  shall  come  to 

[123] 


worship  before  the  Lord."  (Isa.  66,  18-24).  We  see 
on  the  other  hand,  that,  under  the  precepts  of  Christ 
as  late  as  1799,  a  mob,  shouting,  "Viva  Maria," 
burned  19  Jews  alive  in  the  public  square  of  Siena 
and  as  late  as  November,  1905,  in  the  city  of  Odessa 
alone,  301  Jews  were  horribly  butchered  within 
four  days  by  a  mob  that  was  led  by  priests  carrying 
the  images  of  Him  under  whose  precepts  the  massa- 
cres of  the  Caananites  are  said  to  be  impossible.  It 
is  true  Dr.  Gladden  frankly  admits  that  the  churches 
have  often  generally  misrepresented  Christ.  We 
are  quite  willing  to  admit  this  statement  but  then 
it  must  also  be  admitted  that  the  precepts  of  Christ 
were  not  strong  enough  to  prevent  such  misrepre- 
sentation and  Torquemada  and  Arbues  could  not 
possibly  have  been  worse  monsters  than  they  actu- 
ally were  under  "The  precepts  of  henotheism." 

It  affords  some  little  satisfaction  to  read  a  differ- 
ent view  of  the  cause  of  Christianity's  degeneration. 
Ellwood  Hendrick,  in  an  article  entitled  "Saul  of 
Tarsus,"  published  in  the  January  issue  of  the 
North  American  Review,  makes  the  apostle  Paul 
responsible  for  all  the  ills  of  the  present  Chris- 
tian society,  and  the  reason  for  this  pernicious  influ- 
ence of  Paul  was  that  he  preached  "Instead  of  the 
simple  gospel  of  love  which  Jesus  taught,  a  new 
Jewish  code."  Mr.  Hendrick  is  not  an  anti-semite. 
He  wishes  that  Paul  had  never  contaminated  Chris- 
tianity. "Then  we  should  all  have  been  Jews,  and 

[134] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  Jews  would  have  been  different."  Mr.  Hen- 
drick  also  regrets  the  persecutions  of  the  Jews  which 
are  "one  of  the  most  unkind  and  unchristian 
features  of  Christian  society."  Paul  is  also  respon- 
sible for  Calvin  and  the  Presbyterian  Church,  which, 
following  his  principles,  established  a  political  ma- 
chine that  took  all  the  heart  out  of  religion. 

It  cannot  be  our  purpose  to  meddle  with  these 
internal  quarrels  of  Christendom.  We  don't  rejoice 
in  them  and  we  do  not  believe  that  in  themselves 
they  prove  the  superiority  of  Judaism.  It  may, 
however,  be  said  that  we  fail  to  understand  the  big 
ado  made  by  a  Church  society  which  recently  held 
its  convention  in  the  Madison  Square  Presbyterian 
Church,  of  New  York.  This  convention  declares  it 
to  be  the  great  need  of  the  present  Church  to  convert 
the  Jews  to  Christianity.  Fortunately  the  Jews  are 
in  position  to  reply  that  the  fear  of  the  success  of 
these  missions  is  the  least  trouble  which  confronts 
the  present  day  Jewry.  It  is  quite  a  long  time  since 
the  apostle  Paul — though  according  to  modern 
critics  the  authenticity  of  his  writings  is  in  doubt — 
prophesied  that  "All  Israel  shall  be  saved"  (Rom. 
11,  26).  It  is  now  a  hundred  years  since  a  German 
cobbler  named  J.  C.  Frey  patched  up — he  doesn't 
seem  to  have  made  good  in  patching  shoes — a  mis- 
sionary society  in  America  which  proposed  to  settle 
Jews  on  the  land  and  incidentally  make  Christians 
of  them.  The  scheme  did  no  good  to  anyone  except 

[125] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

to  the  reverend  cobbler.  The  New  York  convention 
spoke  gloriously  of  the  wonderful  success  of  a  mis- 
sion in  Chicago.  From  personal  observation  the 
writer  knows  that  this  mission  is  officered  by  two 
young  Polish  Jews,  who  make  a  livelihood  by  repeat- 
ing the  cant  in  which  they  have  been  drilled  by  one 
who  is  of  the  same  type  as  themselves.  We  can  un- 
derstand that  a  Christian,  though  he  has  outgrown 
the  dogmatic  conceptions  in  which  he  was  reared, 
constructs  for  himself  a  Christianity  which,  while 
entirely  of  his  own  making,  he  claims  and  even  be- 
lieves to  be  the  real  Christianity  of  Jesus.  We  can 
understand  that  the  Christianity  which  he  sees  about 
him,  the  Christianity  preached  by  Billy  Sunday,  who 
prays  to  the  Trinitarian  God  to  kill  the  Unitarians, 
else  He  should  be  considered  a  liar,  that  such 
Christianity  is  abhorrent  to  men  of  such  refined  mind 
as  is  the  famous  Columbus  preacher.  We  can  under- 
stand that  one  sees  the  cause  of  Christianity's 
troubles  in  the  misrepresentation  by  such  preachers 
while  another  dates  the  degeneracy  back  to  St.  Paul. 
We  cannot  understand,  however,  how  people  admit- 
ting the  need  of  re-interpreting  Christianity,  can  logi- 
cally insist  that  Judaism  is  incapable  of  any  devel- 
opment and  requires  the  services  of  ignorant  scamps, 
or  at  best ' '  Schlemiels ' '  to  bring  it  up  to  the  level  of 
the  only  true  type  of  humanity. 


[126] 


A  CONTRIBUTION  TO  THE  QUESTION  OF 
INTERMARRIAGE  IN  JUDAISM. 

Every  world  crisis  has  in  some  way  or  other  a  con- 
nection with  Jewish  affairs.  Of  modern  instances 
the  case  of  Dreyfus  furnishes  the  best  example.  It 
\vas  the  prelude  to  the  final  passing  of  the  bill  which 
legalized  the  separation  of  state  and  church  in 
France.  The  present  world  crisis  no  doubt  has  had 
and  will  have  a  still  greater  bearing  on  Jewish  af- 
fairs and,  vice-versa,  its  complication  with  Jewish 
affairs  will  in  all  likelihood  contribute  considerably 
to  the  settlement  of  the  present  war.  From  this 
point  of  view  it  is  but  natural  that  the  discussion  of 
Jewish  affairs  at  this  very  moment  has  assumed  such 
great  proportions,  even  in  neutral  countries  like  the 
United  States.  There  are  two  pre-eminent  questions 
connected  with  the  war  which  in  some  way  or  other 
are  bound  to  be  solved  when  peace  shall  have  been 
declared.  One  is  the  unbearable  situation  of  the 
Jews  in  Russia,  and  the  other  the  scheme  of  estab- 
lishing a  Jewish  state  in  Palestine.  The  condition 
of  the  Russian  Jews  has  come  prominently  before 


*The  American  Israelite,   Feb.   10,    1916. 

[127] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  public  through  a  resolution  passed  by  the  United 
States  Senate,  which  requested  the  president  to  ap- 
point a  special  day  for  a  collection  on  behalf  of  the 
Jewish  war  victims  in  the  eastern  theater  of  the 
European  war.  The  question  of  a  Jewish  State  in 
Palestine,  which  has  been  agitated  for  the  last  twenty 
years  quite  considerably,  has  in  the  United  States  as- 
sumed a  more  popular  aspect  by  the  rather  unex- 
pected participation  in  the  movement  on  the  part  of 
Louis  D.  Brandeis,  the  great  advocate  of  efficient 
trust  legislation. 

The  various  views  on  the  future  of  the  Jews,  or  to 
use  a  more  popular  term,  on  the  solution  of  the  Jew- 
ish question,  can  easily  be  summed  up  in  two  of  these 
views;  the  ultimate  end  is  either  the  renationaliza- 
tion  of  the  Jews,  or  their  absorption  by  the  people  in 
whose  midst  they  are  living.  The  latter  view  is  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Schreiber,  in  an  article  published  in 
Harper's  Weekly  of  January  8.  It  is  by  no  means 
new.  In  October,  1912,  there  appeared  in  the  Open 
Court  of  Chicago  an  anonymous  article  which,  like 
Mr.  Schreiber,  quotes  Ahasuerus  who  yearns  for 
death.  Nor  is  this  very  new.  More  than  a  hundred 
years  ago  a  Jewish  merchant  living  in  Koenigsberg 
published  a  pamphlet  in  which  he  appealed  to  the 
state's  authorities  to  utilize  the  then  still  existing 
restrictions  on  marriage  in  the  interest  of  a  similar 
scheme.  No  Jew  should  obtain  a  license  to  marry 
unless  a  brother  or  a  sister  of  his  had  married  out  of 

[128] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  faith.  "We  are  too  enlightened  to  propose  such 
police  measures  as  might  have  been  considered  feas- 
ible in  Prussia  under  the  system  of  strictest  pater- 
nalism, but  our  views,  at  least  those  of  a  considerable 
portion  amongst  the  Jews,  are  still  the  same.  They 
seem  to  overlook  two  important  points.  The  one  is 
that  there  might  after  all  be  a  third  alternative. 
The  Jews  might  be  tolerated  as  Jews  by  their  envi- 
ronment, and  then  feel  perfectly  happy  and  in  place. 
Logically  or  theoretically,  everybody  will  admit 
that  such  a  solution  is  within  the  range  of  possibil- 
ity. Another  point,  which  is  overlooked  by  Mr. 
Schreiber,  as  it  has  been  overlooked  by  many  before, 
is,  that  intermarriage,  whether  decreed  by  a  police 
power,  or  by  some  benevolent  philanthropist,  or  by  a 
Jew  afflicted  with  what  Heine  aptly  terms,  "Juden- 
schmerz,"  conflicts  with  the  Ghetto  proverb,  "It 
takes  two  to  make  a  Shidduk."  "Shidduk"  and 
"Shadchen"  are  two  words  not  merely  peculiar  to 
the  Jewish  vocabulary,  though  slowly  being  adopted 
by  the  English  language,  but  also  to  Jewish  social 
life.  The  word  "Shidduk"  taken  from  Talmudic 
Aramaic  means  originally,  "compromise,"  because 
it  was  the  duty  of  the  "Shadchen,"  the  match- 
maker, to  bring  about  a  compromise  between  the 
conflicting  views  of  the  two  families  whose  children 
he  proposed  to  unite  in  wedlock.  In  modern  times, 
under  the  influence  of  the  environment,  this  institu- 
tion is  no  longer  legalized.  It  is,  however,  not  ex- 

[129] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

tinct,  as  the  advertisements  of  the  "Shadchen"  in 
the  Jewish  press  prove.  In  former  times  the  ' '  Shad- 
chen"  practiced  a  recognized  profession,  often  as  a 
secondary  occupation  of  the  rabbi,  teacher,  or  any 
other  person  connected  with  Jewish  congregational 
life.  It  was  then  calmly  deliberated,  whether  the 
standing  of  the  family,  and  especially  the  amount 
of  dower  promised,  justified  to  enter  into  further 
negotiations!.  Modern  times  have  changed  •  the 
social  habits,  or  at  least  the  professed  social  ideals 
of  the  Jews,  and  the  "Shadchen"  practices  his  pro- 
fession, more  under  cover,  so  that  the  engagement, 
when  announced,  is  supposed  to  be  the  choice  of  the 
two  young  pepole.  Yet  we  find  in  Jewish  plutoc- 
racy, and  in  bourgeois  circles  this  old  system  still 
prevailing,  and  as  a  rule,  only  abandoned  when  the 
young  man  or  the  young  woman  marry  out  of  the 
faith. 

It  remains  inconceivable,  how  one  can  appeal  to 
the  Jews  in  favor  of  intermarriage,  when  this  fact 
cannot  be  arranged  by  the  police  as  in  good  old 
Prussia;  but  has  to  be  left  to  the  choice  of  the  in- 
dividual. Or  should  indeed  somebody  decree  that 
a  Jewish  young  man  or  a  Jewish  young  woman  must 
under  no  condition  marry  anyone  who  is  of  Jewish 
parentage?  For  let  this  be  understood:  Intermar- 
riage from  the  racial  point  of  view,  was  at  no  time 
prohibited  by  Jewish  law.  Up  to  very  recent  times, 
all  political  laws  prohibited  intermarriage  between 

[130] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Jews  and  Christians.  Conversion  to  Judaism  from 
Christianity  was  also  prohibited.  Intermarriage, 
therefore,  could  only  occur  under  great  difficulties. 
But  it  did  occur.  It  was  not  infrequent  in  the  case 
of  slaves.  The  Jews  in  mediaeval  times  were  largely 
engaged  in  slave  trade,  and  very  often  kept  some 
slaves  in  their  homes  treating  them  as  members  of 
the  family  and  raising  their  offspring  as  Jews.  Fur- 
ther, numerous  cases,  comparatively  speaking  of 
course,  of  proselytes  are  recorded,  and  at  no  time  do 
we  find  any  objection  to  intermarriage  with  these 
newly  made  Jews.  In  modern  times,  beginning 
with  the  nineteenth  century,  when  progressive  states 
permitted  conversion  from  Christianity  to  Judaism, 
which,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  even  today  not 
legally  permitted  in  Russia,  cases  of  such  intermar- 
riage are  quite  frequent.  So  are  cases  of  intermar- 
riage without  conversion  of  the  Jewish  part,  in 
which  children  are  brought  up  as  Jews. 

The  whole  idea  of  racial  purity  and  of  a  theoreti- 
cal objection  to  intermarrying  with  persons  of  non- 
Jewish  descent,  is  an  invention,  unless  in  so  far  as 
habit  and  social  prejudice  are  concerned.  The  per- 
centage of  such  intermarriage  may  be  small.  In  the 
United  States,  we  have  absolutely  no  means  of  form- 
ing any  idea  as  to  their  statistics.  In  Germany  they 
average  ten  per  cent.  In  large  cities,  like  Berlin, 
they  rise  to  sixteen  per  cent  among  women,  and 
eighteen  per  cent  among  men.  These  figures 

[131] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

naturally  do  not  include  those  who,  before  marrying, 
accept  the  faith  of  the  other  party.  Therefore,  the 
total  must  show  even  a  larger  figure.  At  any  rate 
the  tendency  to  intermarry  is  on  the  increase.  In 
Hungary  where  up  to  1895  intermarriage  between 
Jews  and  Christians,  as  well  as  conversion  from 
Christianity  to  Judaism  were  prohibited,  the  latest 
figures  at  my  disposal  show  for  1911,  7950  Jewish 
marriages  amongst  whom  391  were  intermarriages. 
This  is  slightly  less  than  five  per  cent,  and  again, 
there  must  be  added  to  these  figures  the  marriage 
of  those  who  embrace  Judaism  before  marrying. 
Leaving  them  out,  though  they  may  not  be  an  incon- 
siderable quantity,  we  would  of  course  find  five  per 
cent  very  little.  It  still  would  mean  that  out  of  a 
hundred  Jews,  ninety-five  marry  within  the  Jewish 
fold,  and  only  five  outside  of  it,  so  that  the  absorp- 
tion of  Jews  by  their  environment,  if  not  progress- 
ing more  rapidly,  would  be  indeed  a  very  slow 
process.  Suppose  such  an  aim  were  desirable,  the 
question  still  remains  as  to  what  can  be  done  to  in- 
crease this  ratio,  unless  the  Prussian  method  of  1804 
were  adopted.  The  most  important  question,  how- 
ever, is,  why  should  it  be  the  Jews,  taking  them  to  be 
a  racial  unit,  who  are  to  be  compelled  to  marry  out- 
side of  their  racial  boundary  line  ?  The  only  answer 
to  be  given  to  it  would  be  that  Judaism  as  an  institu- 
tion, be  it  expressed  in  synagog  or  in  social  life,  is 
something  undesirable.  It  is  undesirable  to  their 

[132] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

neighbors ;  for  to  the  Jews  themselves  it  could  only  be 
undesirable,  when  their  neighbors  treat  them  as  in- 
feriors. That  the  Jews  are  racially  inferior  beings, 
no  sound  person  will  assert.  Even  the  most  pro- 
nounced anti-semites  of  the  type  which  took  its  cue 
from  Renan,  claim  no  more  than  that  the  Jews  have 
habits  that  are  objectionable  to  their  neighbors,  or 
at  worst  have  habits  which  are  morally  undesirable. 
Sound  reasoning  will  hardly  be  willing  to  admit 
this  claim.  No  one  will  deny  that  there  are 
"white"  and  "black"  non-Jews.  The  fact  that 
seven  Jews  have  received  Nobel  prizes  during  the 
short  time  that  these  prizes  are  in  existence,  is  in  it- 
self sufficient  evidence.  The  names  of  David  Ricar- 
do,  Benjamin  Disraeli,  Heinrich  Heine,  Giacomo 
Meyerbeer,  and  Paul  Ehrlich,  certainly  prove  that 
the  Jews  as  a  class  are  not  inferior.  It  will  even 
seem  to  me  that  proportionately  the  Jews  have  done 
more  for  the  world's  civilization,  than  their  small 
number  would  require  of  them,  applying  to  them  a 
per  cent  limit,  which  only  narrow-minded,  and  bar- 
barous governments  like  Russia  would  exact.  A 
proof  for  such  an  assertion  is  just  as  hard  to  bring, 
as  it  is  hard  to  refute.  "We  may  say,  however,  this. 
If  Italian  Jews  who  number  only  one  permille  of  the 
total  population,  have  given,  to  their  country  a 
statesman  like  Luigi  Luzzatti,  and  a  scientist  like 
Lombroso,  the  case  would  be  proven  for  Italy.  We 
may  even  say  that  names  like  those  of  Israel  Zang- 

[133] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

will,  of  Arthur  Schnitzler,  of  Ludwig  Fulda,  and 
David  Belasco,  will  be  in  a  century  hence,  as  promi- 
nent as  the  average  found  in  any  history  of  litera- 
ture, or  in  any  biographical  encyclopedia.  Be  it, 
however,  as  it  may,  no  sane  person  will  deny,  that 
the  Jews  as  a  class  have  done  their  share  towards 
establishing  their  claim  on  recognition  as  equals, 
and  human  society  as  such  has  absolutely  no  reason 
for  demanding  that  the  Jews  as  a  class  shall  disap- 
pear. 

The  question,  however,  may  be  placed  before  the 
Jews  themselves.  Why  should  they  persist  to  exist 
when  their  existence  as  a  separate  body  has  become 
meaningless?  The  answer  has  to  be  given  from 
three  points  of  view.  There  is  still  a  very  large 
class  of  Jews  who  contest  the  claim  that  their  exist- 
ence is  an  anachronism.  To  millions  of  Jews  their 
religion  is  something  God-given,  that  can  be  neither 
abolished,  nor  improved  upon.  They  see  absolutely 
no  reason  why  they  should  loosen  the  tie  which 
binds  them  to  their  ancient  historic  tribe — to  use  the 
anti-semitic  slang.  That  in  this  twentieth  century 
any  public  authority  should  compel  Jews  to  abandon 
this  claim,  no  sensible  person  will  demand.  Let  us 
take  an  individual  instance.  The  first  Jews  arrived 
on  the  soil  of  the  United  States  in  1654.  Suppose 
we  could  trace  an  American  Jew  who  could  establish 
his  ancestry  from  these  Jewish  pilgrims.  Suppose 
this  Jew  were  an  enthustiastic  Jew,  who  believes 

[134] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

that  the  Jewish  law  is  divine,  and  has  to  be  observed 
in  all  details,  until  by  some  act  of  a  new  revelation  it 
shall  be  abrogated,  or  until  the  prophecy  that  all 
Israel  shall  be  brought  together  from  the  four  cor- 
ners of  the  earth  and  renationalized  in  ancient 
Palestine,  shall  have  been  realized.  I  will  admit 
that  the  probability  to  find  such  a  person  is  not  very 
strong,  but  it  might  be  the  case.  The  question  then 
would  be  in  order:  Can  any  state  or  any  social  law, 
or  even  prejudice  rightfully  demand  of  such  a  man 
that  he  submit  to  ostracism,  to  legal  disabilities  or 
persecution,  unless  he  would  give  up  this  idea?  We 
have  no  statistics  on  the  early  Jewish  population  of 
the  United  States,  but  as  there  were  in  1840  about 
twenty  organized  Jewish  congregations,  it  is  safe  to 
assume  that  there  were  10,000  Jewish  people  living 
in  the  country.  There  are,  therefore,  numerous 
Jews  still  affiliated  with  Jewish  life,  and  some  of 
them  sincere,  and  devout  Jews,  who  have  four  Ameri- 
can ancestors  to  look  back  upon.  Could  it  occur  to 
anybody  as  possible  to  compel  these  people  to  aban- 
don their  affiliation  with  Judaism?  There  can  be 
but  one  answer  to  this  question. 

There  is  a  second  class  of  Jews — and  they  may 
form  the  largest  proportion — to  whom  Judaism  is 
not  absolute  truth  and  absolute  revelation,  but  who 
consider  Judaism  either  better,  or  at  least  as  good  as 
Christianity.  These  Jews  will,  as  a  rule,  let  us  say 
nine  out  of  ten,  marry  within  the  Jewish  fold.  They 

[135] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

will  do  so,  perhaps  from  choice,  but  more  likely  from 
social  habit,  because,  "It  takes  two  to  make  a  Shid- 
duk."  Such  people,  facing  the  question  how  to 
bring  up  their  children,  will  feel  that  these  children 
ought  to  be  taught  the  religion  of  their  fathers,  at 
least  in  that  way,  that  this  constitutes  not  merely  an 
inheritance  of  historic  value,  and  an  inspiration  in 
the  forming  of  character,  but  in  some  respects  the 
best  system  of  religious  thought.  This  may,  and 
does  even  occur  in  a  considerable  number  of  cases  of 
intermarriage.  But  the  consistent  attitude  of  those 
who  advocate  intermarriage  with  a  view  that  Juda- 
ism as  a  class  shall  disappear,  would  be  that  only 
such  intermarriages  should  be  tolerated,  whose  off- 
spring will  be  brought  up  as  Christians.  I  ask,  is 
this  reasonable? 

A  third  class  consists  of  those  who  labor  under 
their  "Judenschmerz."  The  type  of  this  class  is 
Michael  Beer,  the  brother  of  the  composer  Meyer- 
beer, who  writes  to  Heinrich  Heine  from  a  French 
seashore  resort  that  unfortunately  even  all  the  wa- 
ters of  the  Atlantic  Ocean  cannot  wash  his  Judaism 
off.  Many  of  these  have  tried  their  best  to  meet 
the  advice  of  getting  rid  of  their  Judaism.  Some 
have  changed  their  names,  have  changed  their  re- 
ligion, have  studiously  avoided  contact  with  Jews, 
and  have  even  affected  the  habits  of  their  environ- 
ment to  an  extent  which  made  them  ridiculous.  Did 

[136] 


they  succeed  ?  The  case  of  Heinrich  Heine,  to  whom 
his  native  city  refuses  a  monument,  and  that  of  Ben- 
jamin Disraeli,  whom  his  political  opponent,  the 
truly  liberal  Gladstone,  calls  a  fanatic  Jew,  proves 
the  contrary. 

Any  injustice  done  to  the  first  two  classes,  which 
means,  any  withholding  of  social  or  civic  rights  on 
the  ground  of  their  affiliation  with  Judaism,  is  plain- 
ly illogical,  and  as  to  the  third  class,  the  proper 
policy  would  be  for  those  who  feel  that  the  Jews  of 
today  are  "the  burdensome  stone"  of  which  Zecha- 
riah  speaks,  to  encourage  the  assimilative  tendencies 
by  proper  social  attitude.  On  the  part  of  the  Jews 
nothing  can  be  done  in  this  respect,  for  "It  takes 
two  to  make  a  Shidduk." 

All  this  is  beside  the  question.  What  is  de- 
manded now  under  the  present  critical  condition  of 
the  world,  is  first  of  all  the  removal  of  the  burning 
shame  under  which  the  Jews  of  Russia  suffer. 
These  Jews  who  were,  at  least  for  the  most  part,  in- 
habitants of  the  territory  which  they  now  occupy, 
long  before  Russia  annexed  it,  are  entitled  to  full 
civic  and  political  equality,  as  are  all  human  beings. 
Russia  for  the  present,  withholds  from  them  the 
most  natural  rights  of  decent  people,  the  right  of 
selecting  their  residence,  their  occupation,  and  of 
availing  themselves  of  the  educational  facilities  fur- 
nished by  the  state,  to  the  maintenance  of  which  they 

[137] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

contribute  liberally  by  their  taxes.  In  addition, 
they  are  entitled  to  a  full  participation  in  the  public 
life  of  their  country,  while  at  present  they  are  not 
permitted  to  take  part  in  municipal  elections,  even 
in  places  where  they  form  from  seventy  to  eighty 
per  cent  of  the  population.  This  is  rank  injustice 
and  has  to  be  removed.  The  same  rule  is  true  of 
Roumania,  although  she  is  at  present  no  party  to  the 
world  conflict.  The  next  problem  is  that  of  the 
countries,  where  the  Jews  do  enjoy  full  civic  and 
political  equality  by  law,  but  where  the  practice  of 
the  administrative  authorities  denies  them  this  full 
enjoyment.  Questions  like  this  are  difficult  to  set- 
tle. The  Dreyfus  case  is  the  clearest  proof  of  it. 
The  state  may  give  to  the  Jew  the  right  to  occupy 
positions  in  the  army,  and  the  administrative  au- 
thorities may  carry  out  this  law,  but  the  prejudice 
of  the  privileged  classes,  existing  for  centuries,  will 
negate  such  a  law  or  such  practices  or  at  least  work 
against  its  realization.  Still  more  difficult,  however, 
is  the  question  of  social  prejudice.  No  legislation, 
no  administrative  act,  can  solve  this  difficulty.  Life 
alone  must  act  here  as  the  only  remedy.  In  each 
case  it  is  not  the  Jew  who  has  to  speak  the  first 
word.  A  clever  cartoon  in  a  German  anti-semitic 
paper,  on  just  this  point  of  the  proposed  self-efface- 
ment of  the  Jews,  presented  a  negro,  who  is  refused 
service  at  an  American  bar.  The  bartender  points 

[138] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

to  a  legend  above  the  bar,  which  says  that  colored 
persons  will  not  be  served.  The  negro,  however, 
says:  "I  have  resigned  from  the  negro  race."  In 
spite  of  the  malice  of  the  story,  this  is  a  very  good 
illustration  of  actual  conditions^  As  far  as  the 
Jews  are  concerned,  it  takes  two  parties  to  make  a 
"Shidduk." 


[139] 


XII 

THE  REAL  CAUSE  OF  ANTI-SEMITIC 
PERSECUTION.* 

To  the  Editor. 

Sir:  On  June  14  a  pogrom  broke  out  in  Bialystok.  The 
daily  papers  contained  the  first  reports,  June  15,  and  it 
seems  that  Professor  Goldwin  Smith,  who  lives  in  Toronto, 
must  have  at  once  sat  down  to  write  an  article  which 
amounts  to  as  much  as  saying  "Serves  them  right,"  for  this 
article  appeared  already,  June  21,  in  the  New  York  Inde- 
pendent. 

I  first  learned  of  the  appearance  of  this  article  while  I 
was  attending  the  rabbinical  convention  held  at  Indiana- 
polis in  the  first  week  of  July,  and  as  it  requires  more  time 
to  refute  a  falsehood  than  to  utter  it,  for  the  one  who  makes 
the  false  statement  does  not  go  to  the  trouble  of  proving  it, 
while  the  argument  for  the  defense  has  to  be — that  is,  at 
least,  my  habit — supported  by  facts,  an  earlier  reply  was 
impossible. 

I  wrote  the  argument  from  the  Jewish  point  of  view,  as 
the  reader  may  judge,  without  any  animosity  or  personal 
abuse  and  expected  that  the  Independent  would  be  glad  to 
publish  it  in  order  to  prove  that  the  paper  is  not  identified 
with  the  ideas  expressed  by  Goldwin  Smith,  but  my  ex- 
pectation was  too  optimistic.  One  who  reviles  the  Jews 
will  always  find  a  readier  publisher  than  one  who  attempts 
to  defend  them  against  calumny,  as  will  be  seen  from  the 
letter  of  the  Independent.  I  therefore  have  to  publish  my 
reply  to  Goldwin  Smith  in  the  Jewish  press  and  hope  that 

*Published  in  various  American  Jewish  weeklies  in  August,  1906.     An 
abstract   of  it   appeared   in  the    "Literary   Digest,"    Sept.   22,    1906. 

[140] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

at  least  the  readers  will  do  their  best  to  make  this  modest 
attempt  of  mine  circulate  in  the  non-Jewish  world. 

Respectfully  yours, 
G.  DEUTSCH. 

LETTER  OF  INDEPENDENT 

New  York,  August  10,  1906. 
My  Dear  Sir : 

I  am  sorry  to  have  to  return  to  you  this  article  in  reply 
to  one  published  some  time  ago  by  Goldwin  Smith.  I 
would  like  to  print  this  article.  It  is  an  admirable  one, 
but  in  the  first  place  that  was  a  good  while  ago,  and  in  the 
second  place  it  is  not  our  habit  to  publish  articles  attacking 
other  contributors,  and  again  it  is  very  long  and  finally  the 
record  of  the  Independent,  editorially,  does  not  make  it 
really  needy,  for  we  criticised  his  article  when  it  appeared, 
and  we  have  always  in  every  way  attacked  the  anti-Semites. 
It  is  not  likely  that  one  who  like  myself  has  read  the 
Hebrew  Bible  through  before  I  was  nine  years  old,  would 
be  likely  to  have  much  anti-Semitic  feeling.  It  is  a  very 
valuable  article,  and  if  it  would  have  been  shorter  and  had 
not  been  in  the  form  of  a  reply  to  Professor  Smith,  I  should 
have  been  glad  to  use  it. 

Yours  very  truly, 
WILLIAM  HAYES  WARD, 
Editor. 

Professor  Goldwin  Smith,  in  his  article  (Inde- 
pendent, June  21),  entitled,  "Is  It  Religious  Perse- 
cution?" takes,  in  the  light  of  recent  events  in  Rus- 
sia, his  old  stand,  taken  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 
that  the  Jew  has  only  himself  to  blame,  if  he  is  per- 
secuted. 

The  committee  appointed  by  the  Duma  to  investi- 

[141] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

gate  the  events  in  Bialystok,  found  that  during  the 
two  days  of  June  14  and  15,  82  Jews  and  6  Chris- 
tians had  been  killed  and  70  Jews  and  12  Christians 
wounded.  The  government  appointed  another  com- 
mittee, which  arrived  at  somewhat  different  results, 
finding  that,  instead  of  6  Christians,  7  had  been 
killed,  while  the  Jews,  killed,  numbered  not  82,  but 
75.  It  may  be  stated  right  here  that  the  Duma  re- 
port deserves  preference,  because  the  official  record 
of  the  Jewish  Cemetery  shows  that  on  June  18,  78 
bodies  were  buried  in  Bialystok. 

This  event  is  not  isolated.  Similar  outrages  have 
occurred  now  and  then  for  the  last  three  years.  To 
quote  the  best  known  instance:  In  Odessa,  during 
four  days,  commencing  October  31,  1905,  301  people 
were  killed,  and  thousands  wounded,  and  property 
to  the  amount  of  millions  was  destroyed. 

In  the  midst  of  peace,  under  the  eyes  of  the  officers 
of  the  law,  both  civil  and  military,  some  seventy 
people,  amongst  them  old  men,  women  and  infants, 
are  killed,  and  a  writer  sits  in  his  study,  some  four 
or  five  thousand  miles  away,  and  calmly  tells  an  in- 
telligent public  that  the  thing  was  not  so  bad,  after 
all. 

It  is  true  that  Professor  Smith  says  that  the  out- 
rage is  not  palliated  by  inquiring  into  its  cause,  but 
as  he  goes  on,  trying  to  prove  that  the  provocation 
was  all  on  the  Jewish  side,  that  this  evil  has  existed 
for  centuries,  and  that  the  qualities  of  the  Jews  do 

[142] 


not  change,  even  when  they  leave  the  Jewish  fold, 
the  only  inference  is  that  there  is  no  remedy  for  the 
evil,  unless  all  the  Jews  are  disposed  of,  in  the  way 
in  which  the  hooligans  of  Odessa  and  Bialystok  un- 
derstood the  philosophy  of  history. 

Of  course,  Professor  Smith  may  say  that  in  find- 
ing fault  with  the  Jews  he  spoke  expressly  and  ex- 
clusively of  those  who  are  unassimilated,  but,  at  the 
same  time,  he  includes  Benjamin  Disraeli,  who  was 
never  educated  as  a  Jew  and  who  was  baptised  at  the 
age  of  thirteen,  amongst  those  who  prove  his  theory  of 
the  absolute  Jewish  depravity,  and  when  he  says  that 
the  transportation  of  the  negro  to  America  and  the  dis- 
persion of  the  Jew  are  the  greatest  evils  that  have 
befallen  mankind,  the  so-called  assimilation  of  the 
Jew  is  at  once  declared  an  impossibility. 

Compared  with  this  view,  it  is  a  small  matter  when 
Professor  Smith  speaks  of  exaggeration  of  the  perse- 
cutions which  the  Jews  of  Russia  have  suffered.  Sup- 
pose that  in  a  city  of  half  a  million  inhabitants 
slaughtering  was  going  on  for  four  days.  Frightened 
people  flee  from  cellar  to  garret,  from  the  roof  to  the 
house  of  a  neighbor,  down  again  into  a  cellar,  out  into 
an  alley,  and  everywhere  they  meet  the  ghastly  faces 
of  cruelly  murdered  people,  they  see  others  fleeing 
with  the  blood  streaming  down  their  faces,  they  hear 
the  bell  of  the  ambulance  which  is  carrying  victims  to 
the  hospital,  and  the  agonizing  cries  of  those  who 
are  being  kicked,  clubbed  or  stabbed.  Should  any 

[143] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

one  wonder  that  in  the  excitement  of  these  moments 
they  believe  the  hundreds  to  be  thousands?  Or  can 
any  exaggeration  add  to  the  impression  produced  by 
the  fact  that  among  the  victims  are  infants,  two  years 
of  age,  or  that  a  Cossack,  just  for  the  fun  of  the  mat- 
ter, grasped  a  five-months-old  child  by  the  throat  and 
held  it  out  in  the  air  until  it  choked  to  death,  just  as 
naughty  boys  might  do  with  a  bird  fallen  from  the 
nest?  These  are  facts  which  one  can  only  deny  if 
he  would  declare  the  burning  of  Bruno  and  Huss,  the 
hanging  of  Mary  Fisher  in  Massachusetts,  the  execu- 
tions of  the  Puritans  in  England,  and  the  record  of  the 
Spanish  Inquisition,  a  myth. 

Goldwin  Smith,  however,  claims  that  all  these  facts 
are  not  religious  persecution,  although,  strangely 
enough,  in  one  instance,  which  I  shall  illustrate  later, 
he  admits  it,  evidently  without  being  aware  that  he 
has  overthrown  his  theory.  For  the  sake  of  systemati- 
cally arranging  the  plea  on  the  Jewish  side,  I  shall 
divide  Mr.  Smith's  statements  according  to  three 
principles:  The  objection  to  the  Jews  from  the 
economical,  from  the  ethnological  and  from  the  re- 
ligious point  of  view,  and  as  we  are  living  in  a 
materialistic  age  the  economical  side  of  the  question 
shall  be  taken  up  first. 

The  Jews,  according  to  Goldwin  Smith,  are  a  para- 
sitic race,  a  tribe  wandering  all  over  the  world  for  the 
purpose  of  gain.  The  metaphor  is  not  very  compli- 
mentary, as  it  suggests  the  vines  which,  killing  the 

[144] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

tree,  live  on  by  their  embrace.  We  will,  however,  not 
quarrel  with  Professor  Smith  on  this  account,  as 
the  expression  is  not  his  own,  for  it  has  been  used 
by  the  late  Edward  von  Hartmann  (Das  Judentum  in 
Gegenwart  mid  Zukunft,  Leipsic,  1885),  and  is,  very 
likely,  older  still.  If,  however,  we  examine  it  crit- 
ically, it  will  be  impossible  to  give  a  definition  of  it. 
Why  are  the  Jews  parasites?  They  are  traders,  stock- 
jobbers and,  in  general  intermediaries  in  the  economic 
life  of  the  world.  Granted  for  a  moment  that  this 
be  so,  are  they  the  only  ones  in  this  line  ?  Are  there 
no  Christian  merchants,  shopkeepers,  stock-jobbers, 
insurance  and  book  agents,  real  estate  and  ship  brok- 
ers, and  engaged  in  any  number  of  other  pursuits 
where  they  make  a  livelihood  by  bringing  the  buyer 
and  seller  together  ?  The  only  answer  that  I  can  think 
of  in  this  case  is  that  the  Jew  practices  his  vocation 
unscrupulously  and  dishonestly,  while  the  non-Jew 
is  always  filled  with  higher  ideals.  To  such  a  state- 
ment no  objection  could  be  raised,  because  fairness 
and  unfairness  are  terms  which  can  not  be  proven 
by  statistical  records.  But  if  we  consult  the  statistics 
of  criminality,  it  will  become  evident  that  the  Jew 
shows,  on  an  average,  a  higher  morality  than  his 
Christian  neighbors.  Not  wishing  to  burden  this  es- 
say with  cumbersome  statistics,  I  merely  refer  to  the 
article,  "Criminality  of  the  Jews,"  in  the  Jewish  En- 
cyclopaedia. Taking  the  matter  up  from  the  stand- 
point of  personal  experience,  I  might  add  that  I  at- 

[145] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

tended  recently  a  discussion  on  the  subject  of  trusts, 
and  one  of  the  debaters,  quoting  his  own  business 
practices  in  favor  of  the  trusts,  answered  the  objec- 
tions raised  from  a  moral  point  of  view,  with  the 
plain  words,  "I  am  not  in  business  for  my  health." 
I  merely  ask  the  reader  whether  he  is  convinced  that 
such  a  statement  could  only  have  been  made  by  a 
Jew,  or  whether  the  great  magnates  of  finance,  like 
Jay  Gould,  Russell  Sage,  J.  D.  Rockefeller,  J.  Pier- 
pont  Morgan,  and  all  the  great  speculators,  whose 
practices  have  been  revealed  by  Thomas  W.  Lawson, 
have  not  been  acting  on  this  principle. 

Merely  to  defend  myself  against  misinterpretation 
I  wish  to  add  that  I  do  not  consider  the  work  of  a 
middleman  parasitic.  Jewish  second-hand  shopkeep- 
ers help  to  turn  cast-off  articles,  valueless  and  bur- 
densome to  their  present  owner,  into  articles  of  value 
and  usefulness.  The  junk  dealer  is  not  a  criminal, 
and  his  business  practices,  even  if  they  are  somewhat 
sharp,  do  not  justify  anybody  in  choking  that  shop- 
keeper's baby  to  death,  nor  in  performing  the  same 
act  of  kindness  on  his  neighbor's  child,  who  happens 
to  recite  his  prayers  in  Hebrew.  Further,  I  do  not 
believe  that  the  publisher  —  in  this  line  of  business 
the  Jews  are  almost  totally  unrepresented  —  is  any- 
thing different  from  a  middleman.  I  further  do  not 
believe  that  a  Jewish  storekeeper  in  New  York  could 
do  business  on  any  different  methods  than  those  em- 
ployed by  John  Wanamaker  or  Marshall  Field. 

[146[ 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Neither  of  these  gentlemen  are  in  the  business  for 
their  health,  nor  is  the  self-avowed  object  of  English- 
men wandering  all  over  the  globe  different  from  those 
which  Goldwin  Smith  charges  to  the  Jews.  The 
Spectator  of  July  14,  1906,  says:  "We  (the  British 
people)  have  in  most  of  the  dark  regions  commenced 
our  work  writh  the  intention  of  securing  gain." 

The  most  important  point,  however,  is  that  it  is 
absolutely  false  to  say  that  the  Jew  is  exclusively  a 
middleman.  This  statement  is  so  grossly  false  that 
it  cannot  have  been  made  out  of  ignorance.  The 
New  York  papers  of  July  27  contain  the  report  that 
Meyer  Goldstein,  a  painter,  fell  from  the  scaffold 
and  was  killed.  The  name,  Meyer  Goldstein,  does 
not  suggest  Irish  descent;  still,  this  same  Mr.  Gold- 
stein, who  may  have  come  from  Bialystok,  and  might 
have  been  killed  there  by  hooligans,  if  he  had  not 
previously  gone  to  New  York,  is  made  responsible 
for  the  deeds,  which  the  good-natured  Mujik  has 
been  goaded  into  doing.  Or  should  Meyer  Gold- 
stein be  the  only  one,  amongst  the  750,000  Jews  of 
New  York,  who  followed  a  manual  trade,  while  the 
remaining  749,999  are  sucking  the  blood  of  their 
Christian  neighbors?  Is  it  not  a  matter  of  public 
record  that  the  workers  in  the  sweatshops  of  London 
and  the  large  cities  of  America  are,  to  a  great  extent, 
Jews?  Do  we  not  know  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
Jews  to  be  working  in  the  tailor  shops,  in  the  shirt, 
cap  and  cloak-making  trades,  in  the  shoe  factories 

[147] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

and  the  like?  This  fact  is  patent  with  anti-Semitic 
agitators.  They  often  use  it  against  Jewish  immi- 
gration, as  tending  to  the  pauperization  of  the 
masses.  Now  what  is  the  Jew  to  do?  If  he  makes 
money  in  business,  he  is  ruining  his  neighbors  by 
taking  too  much  of  their  money.  If  he  works  in 
shops  at  low  wages,  he  is  ruining  them  by  not  taking 
enough  of  their  money.  So  it  is  the  old  story  of 
Lessing's  Patriarch,  "Thut  nichts,  der  Jude  wird 
verbrannt."  Prof.  Smith  brings  another  argument 
from  history.  The  Jew  has  always  been  a  blood- 
sucker. He  was  a  money-lender,  serving  the  king 
for  the  purpose  of  looting  his  dearly  beloved  sub- 
jects. I  shall  lay  stress  on  the  latter  fact,  proving 
from  altogether  unsuspected  sources  how  little  the 
Jew  was  to  blame  for  such  a  condition.  The  Tal- 
mud prohibits  the  taking  of  interest — mind  you,  the 
taking  of  any  interest,  not  merely  usury — as  unlaw- 
ful, even  when  the  debtor  is  a  non-Jew.  This  is 
clearly  stated  in  the  usual  Talmud  editions.  (Trac- 
tate Baba  Meziah,  page  70b),  and  pious  Jews,  in  the 
twelfth  century  had,  naturally,  very  serious  scruples. 
One  of  their  rabbis,  Jacob  ben  Meir,  who  lived  in  the 
Champagne,  says;  "What  can  we  do?  Since  we 
have  to  pay  burdensome .  taxes  to  kings  and  nobles, 
no  matter  at  what  interest  we  lend  the  money,  it 
barely  suffices  to  make  a  livelihood.  Furthermore, 
we  have  no  other  trade  left,  and,  therefore,  it  is  just 
as  legitimate  to  lend  money  as  to  follow  any  other 

[148] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

trade."  Prof.  Smith  may  look  this  reference  up  in 
any  edition  of  the  Talmud,  from  any  library,  or  con- 
sult any  manuscript,  all  in  the  possession  of  non- 
Jews. 

We  have,  however,  other  testimony.  Under  the 
Carlovingian  kings,  collections  of  specimens  of  pub- 
lic documents  were  made.  In  such  a  Liber  Formu- 
larum,  passports,  issued  to  Jews,  are  preserved,  and 
the  most  careful  study  of  these  documents  shows 
not  the  slightest  evidence  of  money-lending  as  an 
occupation  amongst  the  Jews.  (Ed.  Rozieres: 
Recueil  general  des  documents  usites  dans  1'empire 
de  France.  Paris,  1859-71,  Vol.  I,  pp.  41-3).  They 
were  traders,  and  no  less  reprehensible  than  the 
English  or  German  merchants,  who  are  praised  as 
pioneers  of  civilization  for  establishing  their  busi- 
ness houses  in  some  South  Sea  Island,  or  on  the  coast 
of  Africa.  Under  Charlemagne,  we  hear  of  a  Jew 
who  came  to  court  as  an  importer  of  foreign  goods. 
The  king  had  great  confidence  in  his  honesty,  and 
used  him  to  play  a  trick  on  a  greedy  bishop.  (Frey- 
tag:  Bilder  aus  der  deutchen  Vergangenheit,  Leip- 
sic,  1888,  Vol  1,  p.  321.)  The  story  is  reported  by 
the  biographer  of  Charlemagne,  the  Monk  of  St. 
Gall.  A  toll  law,  referring  to  a  place  called  Raffel- 
stetten,  on  the  Danube  River,  speaks  of  ''Jews  and 
other  merchants"  passing  by  this  place  on  their 
business  travels.  (Monumenta  Germaniae,  Leges, 
iii,  p.  480.)  The  two  famous  charters,  granted  by 

[149] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

King  Henry  IV  (1090)  to  the  Jews  of  Speyer  and 
Worms  give  them  the  freedom  to  travel  all  over  the 
empire  for  the  purpose  of  buying  and  selling,  but 
make  no  mention  of  money-lending  as  a  Jewish  oc- 
cupation. (Zeitschrift  fuer  die  Geschichte  der  Juden 
in  Deutschland,  Vol.  i,  p.  151  et  seq.)  This  negative 
evidence  is  stronger  than  it  would  appear  on  the  sur- 
face, for,  in  the  legislation  on  the  Jews,  from  the 
thirteenth  century  on,  money-lending  and  pawn-brok- 
ing regulations  occupied  most  of  the  space.  This  is  the 
case  with  the  charter  issued  by  Duke  Frederick  II 
of  Austria  (1244),  (Scherer:  Rechtsverhaeltnisse  der 
Juden  in  deutschoesterreichischen  Laendern,  Leip- 
sic,  1901,  p.  179),  a  document,  which  became  typical 
of  the  legislation  on  the  Jews  in  mediaeval  times. 
If,  therefore,  money-lending  is  not  mentioned  as  an 
occupation  of  the  Jews,  in  1090,  but  is  given  a  promi- 
nent place  in  1244,  it  is  certainly  proven  that  the 
Jews  were  not  money-lenders  up  to  that  time.  This 
inference  is  corroborated  by  the  fact  that  St.  Ber- 
nard was  the  first  to  speak  of  the  Jews  as  money- 
lenders, adding  that  Christians  are,  in  this  respect, 
no  better,  while  Agobard,  the  Bishop  of  Lyons,  who 
wrote  a  venomous  libel  against  the  Jews,  does  not 
mention  this  vice,  amongst  the  others  of  which  they 
are  guilty.  (  Simon:  Jahrbuecher  des  fraenkischen 
Reichs  unter  Ludwig  dem  Frommen,  Leipsic,  1874, 
Vol.  i.  pp.  393-6.)  It  may  therefore  be  said  to  be 
absolutely  proven  that  the  Jews  were  not  money- 

[150] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

lenders  until  after  the  first  Crusade  (1096),  when  the 
bitter  animosity  of  the  mob,  fomented  by  the  clergy, 
relegated  the  Jews  to  this  trade.  How  they  were 
driven  to  high  rates  of  interest  can  best  be  estab- 
lished from  the  fact  that  from  time  to  time,  the  kings 
would  declare  the  debts  owed  to  the  Jews  void,  then 
settled  with  their  debtors  on  the  basis  of  one-third  of 
the  amount,  or,  in  other  instances,  let  the  mob  pillage 
the  Jewish  houses,  burn  the  bonds  and  take  the 
pledges  found  in  their  possession,  as  long  as  they  re- 
ceived a  share  of  the  plunder.  (Jewish  Encyclo- 
pedia, article :  Toetbrief . )  This  is  an  answer  to  Prof. 
Smith's  statement  that  the  Jews  were  always  safe, 
under  royal  protection. 

Under  such  conditions  the  Jew  was,  by  law,  ex- 
cluded from  following  a  manual  trade,  because  this 
trade  was  monopolized  by  the  guilds,  which  would 
never  admit  a  Jew  to  membership;  he  was  further 
excluded  from  regular  commerce,  because  this  occu- 
pation also  was  controlled  by  the  guilds.  Finally, 
he  was  absolutely  prohibited  to  hold  land  in  some 
countries  down  to  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, in  almost  all  countries  down  to  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  while  in  Russia  and  Roumania 
this  prohibition  is  still  in  force.  In  Saxony,  as  late  a.s 
1833,  it  required  a  royal  order  for  a  Jewish  boy  to  be 
apprenticed  to  a  trade.  In  Austria,  as  late  as  1852, 
a  Jew  had  to  fight,  in  the  courts,  for  the  possession  of 
a  house  in  a  rural  district.  In  Russia  the  Jewish 

[151] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

agricultural  school  of  Minsk  a  few  years  ago  was  not 
allowed  to  buy  a  farm  beyond  the  city  corporation 
line.  The  demand,  therefore,  that  under  these  con- 
ditions the  Jews  should  be  farmers  is  equal  to  the 
demand  that  a  man  with  hands  and  feet  tied  should 
jump  into  the  water  and  swim. 

One  of  the  most  malicious  calumnies  against  the 
Jews  in  Russia  is  that,  by  their  wealth,  they  provoke 
the  peasants,  who  naturally  think  that  this  wealth  is 
stolen  from  them.  I  do  not  know  whether  Prof. 
Smith  has  ever  visited  Russia.  I  have.  I  can  state 
that  in  Bialystok  alone  there  are  twelve  to  fifteen 
thousand  Jews  working  in  the  woolen  mills,  in  the 
tanneries  and  in  the  tobacco  shops.  All  over  the 
so-called  "Pale  of  Settlement"  in  Russia  the  great 
majority  of  the  mechanics,  cab  drivers  and  other 
people  living  by  hard  labor  are  Jews.  This  fact  can 
be  tested  in  this  country,  where,  in  every  large  city, 
a  great  number  of  Jewish  mechanics  will  be  found, 
so  that,  of  all  charges  made  by  Prof.  Smith,  only  one 
remains:  That  the  Jews  are  not  found,  to  any  large 
extent,  amongst  the  farming  population.  Consider- 
ing the  fact  that  the  laborer  in  the  factory,  the  me- 
chanic and  the  shopkeeper  are  not  drones  of  society, 
it  would  be  no  condemnation  of  the  Jews  that  they 
are  not  farmers,  and  still  even  this  is  not  true.  All 
over  the  world  the  Jews  are  found  amongst  the 
farming  population.  But  even  if  they  were  not 
among  the  farmers  at  all,  they  would  merely  follow 

[152] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  general  tendency  of  the  ordinary  population. 
The  general  tendency  is  from  rural  districts  into  the 
city,  not  the  reverse.  "The  cry  'Back  to  the  land,'  " 
says  the  Spectotar,  July  14,  1906,  p.  47,  "has  not  as 
yet  led  to  any  appreciable  result." 

The  most  serious  charge  placed  against  the  Jews 
by  Prof.  Smith  is  that  they  are  a  different  race,  and 
that  their  "tribal  spirit"  prevents  them  from  as- 
similating with  other  nationalities.  First  of  all,  the 
intermingling  of  the  two  terms,  tribe  and  race,  is  di- 
rectly illogical.  The  Jew  is  certainly  not  a  race,  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  speak  of  the  negro,  or  of  the 
mongol  race.  What  keeps  him  separate  is  his  re- 
ligion. The  best  proof  of  it  is  that  a  Jew  who 
changes  his  religion  is  immediately  absorbed  by  the 
people  which  he  joins  at  the  moment  when  he  pro- 
fesses his  new  faith.  It  is  further  a  fact  that  the 
Jew  does  not  present  a  different  tribe,  race,  nation- 
ality or  whatever  you  may  call  it.  While  the  ma- 
jority of  the  Jews  are  descended  from  Jews,  they 
have,  from  time  immemorial,  received  into  their 
covenant  people  of  other  nationalities.  Dio  Cassius 
(xxxvii,  17)  already,  in  defining  the  word  Jew,  says 
that  by  this  name  all  those  are  comprised  who,  com- 
ing from  other  countries,  have  accepted  the  Jewish 
customs.  During  the  mediaeval  times,  while  both 
in  Christian  and  in  Mohammedan  countries  proselyt- 
ing was  prohibited  under  penalty  of  death,  individ- 
ual cases  of  converts  to  Judaism  are  recorded. 

[153] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

They  were  especially  numerous  in  the  cases  of  slaves 
emancipated  by  their  Jewish  masters,  and  perhaps 
still  more  frequent  in  the  cases  of  bondswomen, 
whose  children,  begotten  of  Jewish  masters,  were 
educated  as  Jews  (Lehem  Rab,  rabbinical  decisions 
by  Abraham  di  Botom,  Smyrna,  1660,  No.  44).  Of 
the  individual  cases  I  shall  mention  but  one.  In  1874, 
Joseph  Steblitzky,  a  Roman  Catholic  of  Nicolai,  in 
Silesia,  converted  to  Judaism.  He  was  charged  with 
apostasy,  a  crime,  according  to  the  laws  then  in  ex- 
istence, punishable  with  death.  He  escaped  execu- 
tion merely  because  in  the  days  of  the  free-thinker, 
Frederick  the  Great,  it  was  not  quite  practicable, 
and  the  authorities  got  out  of  the  entanglement  by 
declaring  him  insane  (Jewish  Encyclopedia,  article : 
Steblitzky).  It  is  natural  that  only  a  few  instances 
of  this  kind  have  been  preserved  in  historic  records. 
The  only  objection  to  this  argument  would  be  that 
such  cases  were  not  very  frequent,  and  while  this  is 
true,  it  would  be  a  puzzle  to  define  how  little  Jewish 
blood  one  must  have  in  his  veins  in  order  to  become 
estranged  from  his  former  nationality,  or  how  much 
he  must  have,  in  order  to  become  assimilated  with  it. 
Let  us  take  a  well-known  instance.  The  Belmont 
Brothers,  of  New  York,  are  the  sons  of  a  Jewish  fa- 
ther, and  of  a  non-Jewish  mother,  but  they  are  not 
considered  Jews  any  more.  On  other  hand,  there 
are  numerous  instances,  known  to  me,  as  to  every- 
body else,  in  which  sons  of  a  Jewish  father  and  of 

[154] 


SCROLLS,    VOLUME   III 

a  non-Jewish  mother  have  been  raised  as  Jews. 
Why  should  the  latter  be  less  of  American  nationality 
than  the  former? 

The  absolute  impossibility  of  making  such  a  defini- 
tion of  Jews  as  a  tribal  group  is  increased  by  the 
question  of  nationality.  Why  should  the  child  of  a 
German  Jew,  born  in  America,  be  less  American 
than  the  child  of  a  German  Catholic?  Or  why 
should  the  great-grandchild  of  an  immigrant  Jew 
be  less  American  than  William  McKinley,  the  son  of 
an  Irish  immigrant?  Is  there  anything  like  in- 
herited nationality  in  these  days  even  in  countries, 
which,  for  years,  have  had  a  stable  population? 
England  had  amongst  her  statemen,  Mundella,  an 
Italian;  Labouchere,  evidently  of  French  descent, 
while  France  has  had  her  Wilson,  Waddington  and 
Thompson.  Germany  has  now  three  members  of  the 
Cabinet,  with  decidedly  Slavic  names:  Posadowsky, 
Podbielski  and  Tschirsky,  and  she  has  had,  in 
former  times,  a  chancellor  by  the  name  of  Caprivi. 
Russia  has  any  number  of  prominent  public  men 
with  German  names.  I  mention  off  hand  Lamsdorff, 
Voelkersam,  von  Plehve.  The  same  is  true  of  all  other 
nations.  In  the  ruling  families  this  is  still  more 
pronounced.  The  English  king  is  the  son  of  a  Ger- 
man father,  and  there  is  very  little,  if  any  English 
blood  in  his  family,  if  we  go  back  to  George  I,  who 
was  unable  to  speak  English  correctly.  This  clearly 
proves  that  nationality  is  a  matter  of  choice,  and 

[155] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

still  Prof.  Smith  claims  that  Disraeli,  English  born, 
and  the  son  of  English-born  parents,  was  not  British, 
but  merely  a  Jew.  Even  Disraeli's  interference  in 
the  peace  of  San  Stephano,  and  his  successful  effort 
to  keep  Russia  from  seizing  Constantinople,  is 
counted  against  him,  as  a  proof  of  the  unassimilative 
character  of  the  Jews.  Perhaps  Prof.  Smith's  an- 
tipathy to  Disraeli  may  be  the  cause  of  his  anti- 
Jewish  feelings,  for  twenty-five  years  ago  he  claimed 
that  Disraeli  created  jingoism  for  the  purpose  of 
Jewish  propaganda  (The  Nineteenth  Century,  1881, 
pp.  494-515).  This  statement  is  equal  to  the  other, 
that  the  Jews  of  Johannesburg,  although  cosmopoli- 
tan, dragged  Great  Britain  into  the  Boer  war. 
Leaving  the  question  unsettled,  as  to  whether  it  was 
such  a  crime,  that  people,  holding  considerable  prop- 
erty, wanted  to  protect  themselves  against  the  arbi- 
trary rule  of  medieval  theocracy,  I  do  not  know  of 
any  Jew  who  could  be  held  responsible  for  the  Boer 
war  unless  it  were  Alfred  Beit,  who,  born  of  Jewish 
parents,  was  raised  as  a  Christian.  Surely  Cecil 
Rhodes  and  Dr.  Jameson  were  no  Jews.  It  is  a 
strange  thing  that  Alexander  Dumas,  the  son  of  a 
mulatto  father,  and  of  a  Jewish  mother,  could  be- 
come a  Frenchman! 

The  tribal  spirit  of  the  Jews  is  responsible  for  the 
fact  that  the  Russian  Jews  are  charged  with  eating 
into  the  core  of  the  Muscovite  nationality.  It  would 
seem  to  palpable  a  truth  to  retort  that  there  is  no 

[156] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Muscovite  nationality,  but  that  Russia  has  several 
dozens  of  nationalities,  the  Russian  forming  only  one- 
half  of  the  population  of  the  empire,  and  Jews  living 
mostly  amongst  the  Poles,  or  in  that  part  of  the  Rus- 
sian Empire  which  was  formerly  Polish.  Their  exist- 
ence in  that  country  is  proven  by  laws  regulating  their 
condition,  dating  as  early  as  1264.  Consequently, 
their  claim  to  the  territory  is  older  than  that  of  Rus- 
sia. History,  however,  seems  to  have  little  weight 
with  Prof.  Smith,  or  else  he  could  not  say  that  Taci- 
tus called  the  Jews  the  enemies  of  all  races.  As  no 
quotation  is  given,  I  must  believe  that  Prof.  Smith's 
reference,  often  quoted  by  anti-Semites,  is  found  in 
Tacitus'  Annales  (xv,  4),  where  he  speaks  of  odium 
generis  humani.  A  careful  reading  of  this  passage 
would  convince  Prof.  Smith  that  this  refers  to  the 
Christians.  Tacitus  speaks  in  this  passage  of  the  con- 
flagration of  Rome.  He  says  that  Nero  accused  the 
Christians  of  having  set  Rome  on  fire  in  order  to 
avert  suspicion  from  himself.  Tacitus  clears  the 
Christians  of  this  accusation,  but  says  that  they  de- 
served their  fate  for  their  hatred  of  mankind,  and 
in  connection  with  this  statement  charges  them  with 
a  number  of  vile  habits.  This  passage,  as  I  stated 
before,  has  often  been  referred  to  the  Jews,  and  oc- 
curs again  and  again  in  anti-Semitic  literature,  al- 
though, even  in  the  German  Reichstag,  February  13, 
1893,  this  interpretation  was  proven  to  be  wrong,  and 
if  this  is  not  of  sufficient  authority,  I  refer  to  the 

[157] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Protestant  theologian  Karl  Mueller,  who,  in  his  Kir- 
chengeschichte,  Freiburg,  i.  B.,  1892,  Vol.  I.,  page  53, 
takes  the  same  view.  I  lay  stress  on  this  fact  merely 
to  prove  the  inaccuracy  of  Goldwin  Smith's  state- 
ments in  historical  matters,  not  because  it  would  con- 
demn the  Jews,  if  Tacitus  had  charged  them  with  such 
an  attitude  toward  the  non-Jewish  world.  In  fact, 
Tacitus  (Histories,  V,  2,  et  seq.)  does  not  speak  very 
well  of  the  Jews,  either,  but  he  at  least  gives  them 
credit  for  resisting  religious  tyranny.  This  inac- 
curacy is  quoting  hstory  is  also  evident  in  the  ref- 
erence to  the  murder  of  Greeks  in  Gyrene  and  Cyprus, 
reported  by  Dio  Cassius  (Ixviii.  32)  who  says  that 
in  Cyrene  220,000,  and  in  Cyprus  240,000  Greeks  were 
killed  by  the  Jews.  It  will  be  permitted  to  allow  a 
considerable  discount  on  these  figures,  when  we  com- 
pare them  with  the  number  of  those  killed  in  the 
bloodiest  wars  in  modern  history  (as  e.  g.,  that  Ger- 
many in  the  war  of  1870-71,  lost  only  40,080  men), 
and  it  will  be  sufficient  to  say  that,  as  in  Palestine  and 
in  Egypt,  there  were  frictions  between  the  two  na- 
tionalities which  resulted  in  bloody  fights,  in  which 
the  Jews  were  not  always  merely  the  victims. 

The  only  remedy  which  Prof.  Smith  seems  to  hold 
out  to  the  Jews,  if  they  wish  to  escape  the  fate  of  their 
co-religionists  in  Russia,  seems  to  be  contained  in  the 
words :  ' '  The  Jew  may  presently  learn  to  give  up  the 
tribal  rites,  which  conflict  with  a  full  sense  of  nation- 
ality, to  intermarry,  to  associate  freely,  and  to  keep 

[158] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

the  same  day  of  rest."  This  statement  leads  us  at 
once  into  the  religious  side  of  the  question,  which 
Prof.  Smith,  by  the  very  title  of  his  essay,  makes  an 
absolutely  indifferent  matter.  While  not  minimizing 
the  fact  that  there  is  an  objection  amongst  the  Jews 
to  intermarriage,  I  first  of  all  wish  to  point  out  that  it 
is  not  found  amongst  the  Jews  exclusively.  The  Neue 
Freie  Presse,  of  July  1,  1906,  contains  a  report  of  a 
case  which  came  before  the  court  of  Graz,  and  in 
which  Bishop  Kahn,  of  Klagenfurt  —  by  the  way, 
not  a  Jewish,  but  a  Roman  Catholic  Bishop  —  had  de- 
clared a  marriage  between  a  Catholic  and  a  Protes- 
tant invalid  because  a  Protestant  minister  had  solem- 
nized the  marriage,  and  on  this  ground  the  Bishop 
gave  to  the  Catholic  husband  the  right  to  marry  again. 
The  Supreme  Court  of  Austria,  on  October  3,  1905, 
declared  the  marriage  of  a  Christian  and  a  Jewess, 
contracted  in  Switzerland,  invalid  in  accordance 
with  the  view  of  canonical  law.  Another  court  de- 
cision in  Austria,  May  21,  1900,  declared  the  mar- 
riage of  a  Jew  and  a  Catholic  woman  contracted  in 
New  York  as  invalid.  Strong  invectives  against  the 
marriage  of  Protestants  and  Catholics  are  found  in 
one  of  the  leading  Catholic  newspapers  of  Germany 
(Die  Koelnische  Volkszeitung,  February  14,  1906). 
In  the  German  Reichstag,  on  January  24,  1906,  a 
complaint  was  made  that  in  a  book,  by  a  Catholic 
priest,  Father  Fischer,  it  is  stated  that  a  mixed  mar- 
riage, i.  e.,  a  marriage  between  a  Catholic  and  Prot- 

[159] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

estant,  was  "not  a  Christian  marriage,  but  merely 
a  beastly,  political  intermingling  of  sexes."  Better 
known  is  the  fact  that  the  Imperial  Protestant  Federa- 
tion of  England  appealed  to  the  king  to  veto  the  mar- 
riage of  his  niece,  Princess  Ena,  of  Battenberg,  to 
the  King  of  Spain.  In  a  divorce  case  which  came 
before  the  court  of  New  York,  March  30,  1906,  the 
woman  who  was  the  defendant  stated  that  she  could 
not  inform  her  parents  of  the  fact  that  she  had  mar- 
ried a  Jew  (New  Yorker  Staatszeitung,  March  31, 
1906).  Anti-Semitic  politicians  havf  repeatedly 
spoken  in  European  Parliaments  of  the  necessity  of  is- 
suing a  law,  prohibiting  the  marriage  of  "Jews  and 
human  beings."  Still,  the  number  of  intermarriages 
is  not  inconsiderable.  In  countries  in  which  we  have 
statistics,  this  can  be  proven.  So,  in  Prussia,  one  out 
of  seven  Jews,  and  in  Bavaria,  one  out  of  ten,  mar- 
ried out  of  the  faith,  and  in  this  number,  naturally, 
those  are  not  included  who  were  converted  to  the 
religion  of  the  other  party  before  their  marriage. 
Prof.  Smith  speaks,  in  a  vague  way,  of  the  tribal 
rite.  I  can  only  imagine  that  he  refers  to  circum- 
cision. Leaving  aside  the  hygienic  question,  it  would 
seem  to  me  evident  that  no  law  has  any  right  to  in- 
terfere with  religious  convictions.  Granted  that  cir- 
cumcision is  a  barbarous  rite  —  from  the  point  of 
view  of  logic  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  be 
prohibited  by  law,  while  the  belief  in  transubstantia- 
tion,  or,  for  that  matter,  in  the  vicarious  atonement, 

[160] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

and  in  the  practices  built  on  these  dogmas,  such  as 
the  Lord's  Supper,  Supreme  Unction,  etc.,  should  be 
more  reasonable.  This  being  a  delicate  matter,  I  wish 
to  be  clearly  understood.  I  do  not  attack  any  of  these 
dogmas  or  practices,  but  I  merely  see  no  reason  for 
declaring  that  circumcision  ought  to  be  prohibited  as 
contrary  to  the  spirit  of  modern  civilization.  Will 
there  not  be  a  possibility  that  some  day  an  Ingersoll 
might  make  a  demand  that  baptism,  being  a  gross 
superstition,  ought  to  be  prohibited  by  law?  This 
argument  r  "ers  to  tEe  Day  of  Best  just  as  well.  We 
have  now  v_  jte  a  number  of  Seventh  Day  Baptists 
and  Adventists.  There  was  Alexander  Webb,  a  con- 
vert to  Islam,  who  made  propaganda  for  conversion 
to  Mohammedanism.  Supposing  he  would  have  been 
successful?  It  is  not  the  noblest  idea  which  the 
Prophet  of  Israel  has  proclaimed  ''that  all  the 
peoples  will  walk  everyone  in  the  name  of  his  god  ? ' ' 

A  word  must  be  said  on  the  Talmudic  Jew,  whom 
Goldwin  Smith  attacks  so  bitterly.  Let  me  first  of  all 
say  that  the  Talmudic  Jew  does  not  exist  any  more 
than  the  "tribal"  Jew.  If  Prof.  Smith  wTere  capable 
of  the  slightest  degree  of  fairness  he  would  notice 
that  in  America,  as  well  as  in  Western  Europe,  the 
observance  of  the  Sabbath  in  business  is  a  very  rare 
exception.  He  would  see,  not  only  in  passing  along 
Broadway,  New  York,  that  there  is  perhaps  not  one 
Jewish  business  house  closed  on  the  seventh  day. 
He  could  even  notice  in  the  heart  of  the  ' '  Ghetto, ' '  on 

[161] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

Canal  Street,  that  the  push-cart  trade  is  flourishing 
on  Saturday  more  than  on  any  week-day,  although 
buyers  and  sellers  are  both  Jews.  The  expression, 
Talmudic  Jew,  is  a  meaningless,  anti-Semitic  phrase. 
The  Talmud  is  partly  a  code,  regulating  the  ritual 
and  the  civil  laws  of  the  Jews,  and  partly  a  scholastic 
and  strictly  theoretical  discussion  of  the  Biblical  laws 
which  have  not  been  practiced  for  2000  years.  Tal- 
mudic literature  also  contains  historical  and  archaeo- 
logical statements,  folk-lore  and  ethical  teachings, 
many  of  which  are  no  more  law  than  the  eth- 
nical theories  of  Goldwin  Smith  are  part  of  the 
American  Constitution,  because  they  appeared  in  a 
New  York  periodical.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
Talmud  is  an  altogether  condemnable  book.  The 
Talmud  teaches  patriotism  as  a  duty,  enjoins  moral 
principles  in  commercial  life,  praises  menial  labor  and 
is  very  emphatic  on  the  duty  of  gratitude  to  one's 
teachers,  and  on  the  importance  of  cultivating  the  in- 
tellect. Of  course,  there  are  a  number  of  antiquated 
statements  in  the  Talmud.  Rabbis  of  1600  years  ago 
believed  that  the  sun  revolved  around  the  earth,  and, 
provoked  by  oppression,  made  here  and  there  bitter 
statements  against  the  Romans  and  the  Parthians. 
Suppose  that  these  statements  are  somewhat  more 
objectionable  than  the  compliments  paid  by  Tacitus 
and  other  Roman  authors  to  the  Christians.  Could 
any  Roman  in  our  days  be  held  responsible  for  what 
Tacitus  said  in  the  days  of  Rabbi  Akiba  ?  Still,  Gold- 

[162] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

win  Smith  claims  that  the  Jew  is  not  "tolerant" 
now.  His  diatribe  will  certainly  not  foster  the  spirit 
of  toleration,  which  alone  can  bring  about  the  progress 
of  the  world. 

How  do  we  account  for  the  hostility  to  the  Jews? 
It  has  three  causes :  Snobbery,  bigotry  and  that  men- 
tal inertia  which  is  responsible  for  the  survival  of 
many  other  antiquated  ideas. 


[163] 


XIII 
THE  CURSE  OF  THE  CRUCIFIXION* 

In  the  "  Journal  and  Messenger"  of  April  24  I  read 
the  following : 

Our  attention  has  been  called  to  an  address,  or 
sermon,  delivered  on  Easter  Sunday  by  a  Jewish 
rabbi  in  Poughkeepsie,  N.  Y.,  in  which  he  took  occa- 
sion to  air  his  objections  to  Christianity.  He  held 
that  Easter  is  to  be  observed,  not  because  it  commemo- 
rates the  resurrection  of  the  Son  of  God,  but  because 
it  signalizes  "the  resurrection  of  earth's  energies." 
The  rabbi  declared  his  disbelief  of  the  record  of  the 
resurrection  of  Christ,  and  was  particular  to  declare 
the  Jews  non-responsible  for  his  death.  All  was  to  be 
charged  upon  the  Romans;  and  he  undertook  to  rea- 
son that  if  the  death  of  Christ  brought  about  redemp- 
tion, the  Jew  ought  not  to  be  blamed  for  it,  since  good 
came  of  it.  All  this  is  very  shallow  reasoning,  and 
yet  it  is  nothing  new.  It  has  been  a  sort  of  stock 
argument  with  Jews  in  all  ages.  It  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  Jews  said  to  Pilate :  "  If  thou  let  this 
man  go  thou  art  not  Caesar 's  friend. "  "  His  blood  be 
upon  us  and  upon  our  children."  "Crucify  him!" 
' '  Crucify  him ! ' '  Today  we  are  not  disposed  to  load 


*American  Israelite,   May   15,    1902. 

[164] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

upon  the  Jews  anything  more  than  they  dke  upon 
themselves.  But  when  the  Jews  undertake  to  shift 
the  responsibility  by  such  arguments,  and  when  they 
persist  in  justifying  their  ancestors  of  the  days  of 
Pilate  and  Caiaphas,  we  are  compelled  to  withdraw 
some  of  our  sympathy  and  to  admit  that  the  blood 
called  down  upon  them  has  not  been  all  washed  off. 

It  is  remarkable  how  people  will  oppose  incon- 
venient truths.  Many  years  ago  Ludwig  Philippson 
wrote  a  pamphlet  under  the  title,  "Did  the  Jews 
Crucify  Jesus?"  in  which  he  said  everything  that 
could  be  said  on  the  subject.  The  summary  of  his 
arguments,  which  I  give  from  memory,  is  the  follow- 
ing: 

According  to  the  account  of  the  crucifixion  found 
in  the  first  three,  so-called  synoptic,  gospels,  Jesus 
was  crucified  on  the  Passover.  This  was  plainly  an 
impossibility,  for  Jews,  fanatical  enough  to  have  de- 
manded his  crucifixion,  would  certainly  under  no 
condition  have  desecrated  their  holy  day.  According 
to  the  Gospel  of  John,  the  crucifixion  took  place  on  the 
day  preceding  Passover.  Mistake  is  excluded  in  both 
cases,  because  according  to  the  synoptics  Jesus  cele- 
brated the  Passover  meal  with  his  disciples;  conse- 
quently the  crucifixion  could  not  have  taken  place 
before  the  day  following  that  meal,  while  in  the  fourth 
gospel  stress  is  laid  on  the  fact  that  Jesus  represented 
the  Passover  lamb  which  was  to  be  sacrificed  on  the 
day  preceding  Passover,  and  consequently  the  state- 

[165] 


SCROLLS,  VOLUME   III 

merit  that  the  crucifixion  took  place  on  that  day  can 
not  rest  on  a  mistake  of  a  scribe  or  on  the  inexactness 
of  the  memory  of  the  author.  These  contradictory 
statements  would  in  themselves  suffice  to  make  any 
judge  hesitate  before  he  would  pronounce  sentence  on 
such  conflicting  testimony. 

Further,  crucifixion  was  never  a  Jewish  mode  of 
executing  criminals.  The  Pharisees,  who  were  BO 
particular  in  their  legal  minutiae,  would,  if  they  had 
had  to  pronounce  sentence,  certainly  have  proceeded 
according  to  their  law.  Again,  unmistakable  historical 
testimony  proves  that  the  Jews  under  Pontius  Pilate 
and  long  before  his  time  possessed  no  jurisdiction  in 
criminal  matters,  and  consequently  a  sentence  of 
death  rendered  by  the  Sanhedrin,  had  to  be  submitted 
to  the  Roman  govelrnment  for  confirmation.  The 
authors  of  the  various  gospel  accounts  were  familiar 
with  this  fact,  and  this  is  the  reason  why  they  as- 
signed to  Pilate  the  role  of  pleader  for  clemency. 
Pilate  washes  his  hands  in  innocence  and  attempts  to 
dissuade  the  members  of  the  court  from  insisting  on 
the  sentence.  From  what  we  learn  from  reliable 
historians  about  Pilate's  character,  he  was  a  tyrant, 
who  certainly  could  have  had  no  reason  for  objecting 
to  an  execution — but  the  authors  of  the  gospels  found 
it  desirable  to  reconcile  the  supposed  guilt  of  the  Jews 
with  the  fact  that  before  a  sentence  of  death  could 
be  executed  the  governor  had  first  to  confirm  it. 

[166] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME    III 

Further,  if  we  accept  the  crucifixion  story,  we  must 
also  accept  the  reports  of  the  resurrection  and  the 
ascent  to  heaven,  and  there  are  serious  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  an  honest  man's  accepting  these.  If  such 
reports  were  given  out  today  from  Bowie's  Zion  City, 
I  have  no  doubt  but  that  the  editorial  staff  of  the 
"Journal  and  Messenger"  would  greet  them  with 
laughter,  and  would  consider  as  dupes  those  who  be- 
lieved them. 

But  suppose  that  all  this  be  true.  Suppose  that  the 
Jews  really  did  crucify  some  one  who  promised  to 
come  on  the  clouds  of  heaven,  and  who  said  that  he 
and  the  Father  were  one.  What  would  it  prove  ?  It 
would  prove  that  there  were  fanatics  in  those  days 
just  as  there  are  now,  who,  instead  of  committing  a 
man,  mentally  afflicted,  to  an  insane  asylum,  prose- 
cute him  as  a  blasphemer.  Many  worse  things  have 
been  committed  in  the  course  of  history.  Shall  we 
again  point  out  the  fact  that  on  free  American  soil 
the  Puritans  hanged  Mary  Fisher,  a  Quakeress,  be- 
cause she  preached  against  the  rigidity  of  the  Puritan 
creed,  and  that  a  number  of  others  were  scourged  and 
put  to  death  for  the  same  offense?  Shall  we  point 
out  the  fact  that  Michael  Servetus  was  burned  at  the 
stake  by  Calvin  because  he  rejected  the  belief  in  the 
Trinity,  and  that  Luther  heartily  congratulated  the 
Swiss  reformer  for  the  act?  Shall  we  point  out  the 
fact  that  about  1620,  in  the  very  same  Geneva,  where 
Calvin  taught,  a  reformed  preacher,  Nicholas  An- 

[167] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

thoine,  was  burned  at  the  stake  because  he  professed 
belief  in  Judaism  ?  Shall  we  point  out  the  numerous 
victims  of  the  Inquisition  and  of  the  Crusades  ?  The 
Jews  can  not  be  accused  of  any  persecutions  such  as 
these.  It  is  true,  it  may  be  said  they  had  not  the 
power  to  enforce  their  religion  with  the  threat  of  the 
fagot.  Very  well.  But  if  they  really  did  crucify 
Jesus,  they  did  certainly  nothing  worse  than  every 
church  of  Christendom  has  done  since  the  beginning 
of  its  history,  or  what  some  churches  would  do  today 
if  they  had  the  power. 

As  late  as  1852,  Pope  Pius  IX,  condemned  a  man 
and  his  wife  to  the  galleys  for  life  because  they  had 
become  converted  to  Protestantism,  and  about  1867 
he  made  Peter  Arbues  a  saint,  whose  only  claim  to 
this  elevated  position  was  that  he  relentlessly  burned 
heretics,  mostly  Jewish  backsliders,  at  the  stake. 

Allowing  that  the  Jews  crucified  Jesus  and  that 
their  case  was  worse  than  all  the  cases  thus  far  quoted, 
which  can  hardly  be  proven,  it  remains  a  fact  that  the 
present  generation  of  Jews  is  entirely  free  from  re- 
sponsibility in  this  matter.  At  the  supposed  time  of 
the  crucifixion  there  were  thousands  of  Jews  living 
in  Alexandria  and  a  great  number  in  Rome,  in  all  the 
important  commercial  centers  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  in  Mesopotamia.  Even  a  great  number  of  those 
who  lived  in  Palestine  were  beyond  the  scene  of  the 
tragedy.  How  can  it  be  proven  to  the  present  gen- 
eration of  Jews  that  they  are  those  upon  whom  the 

[168] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

blood  of  Jesus  came  in  accordance  with  the  curse 
which  they  are  supposed  to  have  brought  upon  them- 
selves ? 

Pilate  held  office  as  governor  of  Palestine  from  26 
A.  D.  to  36  A.  D.  Suppose  the  crucifixion  took  place 
in  30  A.  D.  Since  that  time  1870  years  have  elapsed. 
Giving  only  three  generations  to  a  century,  which  is  a 
liberal  estimate,  this  would  make  56  generations.  Now, 
how  can  any  reasonable  being  suppose  that  the  al- 
mighty, Allwise  and  Beneficent  Being  who  rules  the 
universe  will  punish  anybody  for  a  crime,  no  matter 
how  atrocious  it  may  be,  which  his  56th  ancestor  had 
commited?  What  outcry  of  horror  would  fill  the 
civilized  world,  were  any  court  to  pass  a  sentence  that 
the  innocent  child  of  a  murderer  should  be  hanged  for 
the  crime  of  his  father.  If  this  is  not  logic,  I  would  like 
to  know  what  is.  And  another  thing:  How  can  it  be 
proven  to  any  Jew  living  that  he  is  not  a  descendant  of 
one  of  the  multitude  of  Jews  who  at  the  time  of  the 
crucifixion  lived  hundreds  of  miles  away  from  this 
scene,  and  never  heard  of  it  until  Christian  Sunday- 
school  children  surprised  them  with  the  important 
news?  How  can  it  be  proven  to  any  Jew  living  at 
present  that  he  is  not  the  descendant  of  one  of  the 
numerous  proselytes  who  were  converted  to  Judaism 
from  nations  who  had  not  the  slightest  hand  in  that 
crime  of  crucifixion ! 

All  the  preceding  remarks  are  based  on  the  suppo- 
sition that  the  crucifixion  really  took  place,  which  for 

[169] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

argument's  sake  I  am  willing  to  allow.  Still  I  con- 
sider it  my  duty  to  state  again  and  again  that  a  sound 
historical  critic  can  arrive  at  but  one  conclusion, 
namely,  that  the  crucifixion,  like  the  resurrection  and 
ascent  into  heaven,  like  the  whole  history  of  Jesus,  is 
a  myth.  Here  are  my  arguments.  Any  one  who  will 
not  accept  the  miracles  finds  himself  placed  before  the 
following  alternatives :  The  history  of  Jesus,  as  given 
in  the  gospels,  is  either  a  legendary  ornamentation 
of  an  event  the  truth  of  which  cannot  be  ascertained 
at  this  distant  date,  or  it  is  an  outgrowth  of  folklore, 
a  myth  become  faith,  an  idea  materialized  into  belief. 
There  is  no  other  way  of  getting  out  of  the  difficulty 
which  faces  us  when  we  consider  the  various  conflict- 
ing stories  of  the  accounts  of  Jesus'  birth  and  all  the 
miracles  connected  with  his  life  until  his  ascent  into 
heaven.  If  we  do  not  accept  them,  we  have  to  choose 
between  interpreting  them  as  legends  or  regarding 
them  as  myths.  To  me  personally  the  latter  course 
seems  to  be  the  better,  not  from  the  Jewish  point  of 
view,  from  which,  as  I  said  before,  it  would  be  alto- 
gether immaterial  if  all  these  events  had  actually 
taken  place,  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  scien- 
tific historian.  That  ideas  are  really  condensed  into 
myth  the  experience  of  every  day  will  prove.  I  might 
cite  the  story  of  the  Wandering  Jew,  of  "William  Tell 
or  of  Faust.  In  all  these  instances  a  mere  idea  is 
through  the  evolution  of  folklore  condensed  into  fact. 
If,  however,  we  regard  the  story  of  Christ  as  legend- 

[170] 


SCROLLS,   VOLUME   III 

ary,  we  would  have  to  state  that  we  are  confronted 
with  such  a  perplexing  theory  that  our  only  escape 
from  the  difficulty  lies  in  the  conclusion  that  all  that 
is  definitely  known  about  the  crucifixion  is  that  some- 
thing like  a  heresy  trial  was  held  in  Palestine  about 
1870  years  ago.  It  is  because  of  that  one  meager  bit 
of  knowledge  on  the  subject  that  today  in  Rumania 
the  poor  Jewish  mechanic  is  not  permitted  to  follow 
his  trade ;  that  the  Jewish  boy  in  Russia  is  not  admit- 
ted to  a  public  school,  and  that  an  inoffensive  old 
Jewish  peddler  in  America  is  insulted  on  the  streets 
by  those  who  are  "baptized"  and  "believe"  and  shall 
be  "saved." 


* 
[171] 


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